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Writing Challenges
I’m a writing challenge drop-out. NaNoWriMo, 70 Days of Sweat, even challenges at Romance Divas are, well, a challenge.
Even knowing I’m unlikely to stick these challenges out, I try them. At the beginning it’s easy—bright shiny new idea and lots of energy to make it happen. But after a few weeks that new idea is not so shiny and bright anymore. If fact it’s kind of…boring. That’s the point that I can no longer make myself sit and work on that book anymore. No problem, I tell myself, you just need a break, a change of pace, then you can go back to this one in a couple weeks. (Hey, don’t laugh! I know I’m not the only writer that has conversations with herself lol. ;) ) Obviously those longer challenges aren’t good for me. There’s just too much time to say, the heck with this. Next!
That’s not going to cut it right now unfortunately. School gets out in 4 weeks and my summer-travel-everywhere marathon to visit friends and family is actually kicking off early in 2 weeks. I love summer, but it’s not a very productive time for me writing-wise. It’s more of an edit, revise, query time. :) But in order to have something that can be edited, etc I have to actually finish it before school gets out.
Enter the ultimate writing challenge. The one you should a gold medal for finishing. Fast draft. The idea is you write 20 pages a day for 14 days. I’m half way through. I fell off the wagon one day but got right back on. Today is day 8 and in a couple hours I’ll sit down and add another 20 pages to the 166 I have now. Hopefully by next Thursday (the day we’re going out of town for 4 days) I’ll have a 300 page first draft and a whole summer before me to make the story shiny again.
Since misery loves company, I have to know if anyone else has done this? And how much chocolate it took to recover when it was over. :D
OMG no! LOL. That sounds insane. But kudos to you for pulling it off :) I’ve done the writing challenges off and on, but prefer to just stick to my own daily quota challenge.
Yeah writing in the summer is hard if you’ve got kids :)
You signed up for that?
You’re nuts. That’s a medical diagnosis, btw. ;) I’m a challenge failure, myself, except for those 20 min chatroom challenges. I can focus for 20 min. 14 day? Notsomuch.
Girlfriend, I don’t even bother anymore. Sometimes my ideas flow easily and I can write twenty pages in several hours. Other times it takes days. And considering I have a day job and a family. I’m a single parent and my kids are supportive and fabulous, but sometimes there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do the writing challenges.
I write because I want to. Writing challenges make me feel like I HAVE TO. And I don’t like that feeling so I tend to drop out and call it a day.
And 20 pages a day? Woman, I’m with Sela – you’re nuts ;D
TJ
www.tjmichaels.com
Turn up the heat – Hatsept Heat, V.C.O.E. Book 3