Just Half An Hour

Timer set… 65-minute countdown for today’s writing burst.

Yesterday I talked (wrote) about getting back into the habit of writing… No apologies… Just doing it.

I thought that doing a writing challenge might be a good way to “ease” myself back into the habit so off to Google and Pinterest I went to look for writing challenges that I could do.

Interestingly enough, for anyone (like me) who didn’t fully, or doesn’t yet fully realize or acknowledge that Pinterest is more of a search engine than a social media network, I have just proven it to myself.

I found LOTS of Pins about blogging challenges. 30-day challenges, 31-day challenges… Themed challenges like 30-day mental cleanse challenges, 31-day self-love challenges, and all manner of creative writing and drawing challenges.

So I focused on the the purely writing/blogging challenges.

Pretty soon (translated: after hours of jumping from Pin to Pin and Board to Board), I realized that a lot of the 30/31-day writing/blogging challenges were very repetitious. The prompts were pretty much variations of the same things to write about.

Snore…

That’s all well and good though… Lots of people had apparently done the numerous variations of these challenges and achieved their goals of developing a regular writing habit… And that is my goal as well.

However…

Some of the prompts just didn’t “speak” to me. Some seemed a bit too corny for me and I couldn’t imagine myself having that much to say about them. Others were just TMI, and still others invoked some painful eye rolls, I just knew I couldn’t use any of them in their “natural” state.

So I improvised.

I took some ideas for prompts from the some ones that I liked and then I came up with brand new fresh ones that I felt I would be more comfortable writing about and also be able to write more prolifically on.

Plus, some just seemed like fun things I’d like to write about so I threw them in there as well. 🙂

Initially I was just going to quietly do this challenge on my own but I know myself quite well, if I have no accountability I am likely to let myself slack off. So I decided to share publicly that I’ll be doing it! Ay ay ay…

I also opted not to do the challenge on my more “popular” site for a few reasons. (I’m sorry if calling that site “more popular” sounds a bit pompous… I just can’t think of a better term to use for it right now, and I’m writing this post as a brain dump so I have to keep moving forward). Some of those reasons are:

1. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to share that much of or about me with that many people. This blog, on the other hand, currently gets almost no traffic so it’s a “safe place” for me.
2. My creative/personal writing is so off-topic from what that other site is about that it just seemed so out-of-place and awkward to just burst out with 31 days worth of posts all about me.
3. Because this site is more relaxed and more just “me” rather than a topic or theme or brand. I feel like even after I eventually get tired of running that other site (one day in the very far future hopefully), that this one will still be around because it’s just about me being me.

So after about four hours (yes y’all!!! It took me about four hours just to come up with a plan/list of what I’d like to write about for the next 31 days!), it was finished. I had my own custom-created 31-Day Blogging/Writing Challenge prompts all laid out.

Oh yeah… Back to my point about why I decided to make this public… Accountability.

Having to be accountable to someone for staying on track means less of a chance that I’ll excuse myself from the challenge for any reason I can come up with.

Also, community.

Doing something difficult or at least outside my comfort zone with others who want to achieve the same goal means that we can motivate and cheer each other on.

So I would like invite anyone else who wants to do more writing or more blogging, be it for the creative joy of it or to drive more traffic to your site or to give your audience an opportunity to get to know you better…

Whatever the reason, whatever your reason, I invite you to join me.

I’ve never done a group thing like this before where I organized it myself and was responsible for the logistics so please be patient with me and let’s just play this by ear.

If you’d like to join in then just declare so. Leave a comment below, include a link to where you’ll be blogging (your blog or website URL), and if you’d like to, you can even say why you’re joining in 🙂

If you’re really ambitious and the goal-setting kind, you can even go a step further and set your goals too and let me know what they are.

Here are some ideas (don’t let these restrict you, feel free to set your own goals OR don’t even feel obligated to set any goals at all):

• Write a certain number of words/day
• Publish a certain number of posts/week
• Write for a certain amount of time each day

The rules are:

• There are no rules…
  • Do what works best for you
  • Do what will allow you to accomplish your own goal(s)
  • If you miss a day, don’t stress yourself out trying to make it up or make up for any lost days… Just pick up and keep moving forward
  • If you don’t like the prompt for any particular day but you still want to write, then by all means, please go ahead and write about what feel led to

And most of all… Enjoy this… Enjoy writing…

What I Won’t Do

• I won’t make you go and visit anyone else’s blog as part of joining or participating in this challenge (but hopefully you’ll be intrigued enough to want to) 🙂
• I won’t force you to do daily or weekly check-ins, or check-ins of any sort really (but if you feel led to share information about your progress or any posts you’ve written, I wouldn’t be mad about that… AND I’d be happy to check out your posts as time permits) 😉
• I won’t try and convince of the benefits (any benefits) of blogging regularly or writing regularly (but hopefully, you already know about all that so joining in will be an easy “yes” for you) 🙂
• I won’t make you wait to start this challenge… You don’t have to wait for a 31-day month to roll around… You don’t have to wait for the beginning of a new month to start… You can do this challenge for any consecutive (or even non-consecutive 31 days)
• I won’t make you join a mailing list in order to have access to the daily prompts (that was one thing that really got under my skin about some of the writing challenges I found in my search for which one to join… I get it, I know it’s a “good marketing technique” to grow your email list and all, but I found it quite frustrating, a little bit annoying, and altogether limiting… And I refused to sign up to, on, or with any list or site that made handing over my email address a prerequisite for joining their challenge). Okay, rant over 🙂

This post will be Ground Zero for everything and anything related to this writing challenge, and that’s really because I’m not tech-savvy enough to know how to do it any other way.

So if the post gets unwieldy, and that could just be wishful thinking on my part, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Without further ado, here are the prompts for this 31-Day Blogging/Writing Challenge.

• Printable Version – I created this for those who are more tactile and prefer to have a printed-out copy on hand for easy reference (plus, it’s much bigger and easier to read than the image below)
• Snapshot below – it’s super-tiny because I had to try and fit everything on one image

If you get through this challenge and you have fun with it and/or find it helpful, please share this post with anyone else you think might enjoy it too or anyone who might find it useful as well.

If you want to do the challenge with a buddy, please do tag them and have them join you in the challenge.

Ready…?

Let’s do this! 🙂