My 500 Words…
… story begins with one moment of spontaneity so here I am beginning a 31-day blog challenge. What I didn’t expect was an email telling me to start now. After all, it is dark outside and since I opened the email and I know it starts now, I must start!
Email: The first, most important thing in starting any new habit is commitment.
Today is the first day of my 31-day challenge. Yes, it feels intimidating. No, it doesn’t feel exciting. It feels like discipline and I am an alcoholic in recovery. “We alcoholics are undisciplined” (Big Book, page 88).
Email: A month isn’t a short amount of time. If you finish this challenge, you will have written over 15,000 words. That’s a lot.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I am finding recovery isn’t the only thing that is done one day at a time. This mindset works in many areas of life and business.
The rules of this 31-day challenge seem simple enough:
- I get to write my 500 words per day, every day for 31 days.
- I can write more if I want, but 500 words is the minimum.
- Don’t edit. Just write. This will be interesting with my daily bouts with Grammarly.
- If I miss a day, I get to pick up where I left off. Don’t make up for lost days. (Margin for life?)
- Encourage, don’t criticize (unless explicitly invited to do so) other participants in the challenge.
- Blogging counts, but email does not.
- All of this is totally free. Why does this matter? Because I participated in another writing challenge where I captured my words in a secret forum and I could have been doing the same thing in my own blog for FREE! Yes, it was a lightbulb moment.
Email: Make a mental effort to decide to finish this thing before you start.
I’m finding I do better in a community environment. I get things done. I’m better at follow-up when I know others are watching what I’m doing. I hate to disappoint and I don’t like to fail. I will be mentioning the challenge on my Facebook page and I’d love an encouraging word from you every now and then.
Other things about the challenge which may be of interest to you:
- There will be writing prompts.
- I will learn to free write which will be liberating as it involves no editing!
- I left a comment on Jeff Goins blog post publicly stating, “I’m in!”
- I did not add my website to the linkup because I’ve had issues in the past with spam, but I will be visiting other blogs.
- I joined the Facebook group for accountability and encouragement.
- I will tweet occasionally about my progress with the hashtag #my500words.
- I’m looking forward to receiving emails with writing tips as there is a book in me just bursting at the seams to get out!
Bring on the writing prompts, I don’t want to ramble on and on about nothing. Have you ever participated in a writing challenge of any type?
