Challenge Accepted!

This week I started a 22 Day Pushup Challenge – to do 22 pushups a day for 22 days, to raise awareness of the high suicide rate of combat veterans. (I know there are various estimates of how many average suicides there are per day, but this is the one the challenge uses, so it’s the one I’m going with). Twenty-two pushups is doable for me, although on top of other workouts it can be a little tougher (yesterday, between false starts filming and a workout that already included a bunch of pushups, I ended up doing 98. Today, closer to 50).

The point is, I like challenges. I tend to do my workouts as “challenges” anyway to keep them interesting and keep motivated. I’m not invested in becoming a super-athlete, but challenges are a way of setting goals and working toward them consistently.   

The same goes for writing challenges. If the prospect of the blank page is de-motivating, or if your energy on a project is flagging, or you’re in query hell and feeling discouraged, a challenge may be a good way to get out of your slump. 

NaNoWriMo is probably the most well-known of the writing challenges: write a 50,000 word novel in a month. (Never mind that it’s more novella-length, unless you are writing Middle Grade). It breaks down to 1,666 words per day, which is doable for enough people that thousands attempt it every year. If that sounds like it’s for you, go to www.nanowrimo.organd sign up for this November. I’ll go into the pros and cons of it in another post. If you’re interested in tackling it but want some preparation so you don’t end up writing 50K words that don’t amount to an actual story, check out my upcoming course NaNoWriMo Preptober Extravaganza!

You don’t need someone else to set a challenge for you though. You can create your own challenge. If it’s to finish a first draft of a novel in six months (more realistic for most people than one) think about how many weeks you have, how many days a week you can write, how many words (approximately) your draft will be, and then divide from there to get your daily or weekly word count goal. 

Remember SMART goals? Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound. These are all golden rules for any challenge you set. With 500 words x 6 days per week for 26 weeks, you would have a 78K novel. Tweak it up for down for what seems realistic to you. If it’s a first draft, I can write 500 words in a half hour or so.   

Specific? Yes.

Measurable: Yes. Number of words/days/weeks.

Achievable: Yes, I can commit to writing that much, and it gives me a day off each week. Note: it should be a stretch, but not impossible. If 2K a day is your stretch goal, go for it. 

Relevant: Yes, if I’m ready to write a first draft! Caveat: You may need to do some preparation before you are ready to write in order to actually have a workable draft at the end. Otherwise, you will have 78K words of mess, and a daunting task of revising it into something. 

Time-bound: Yes, 6 months is a reasonable time for this challenge. 

The point is, you choose what is relevant and achievable for you at this time. It could be a daily word count goal for a certain number of weeks, or a time goal (one hour per day). It is good to set a limit though – not just “one hour per day for the rest of the year.” 

If it’s around the business end of things, it could be a certain number of queries sent out per week. 

It could be “a poem a day for 100 days.”

To make it fun, try setting a reward at the end (or along the way, for longer challenges). Meet your daily goal? Have a piece of chocolate. Meet your weekly, or monthly goal? Buy yourself a book. Meet your overall goal? Get a massage, or take a day trip. Whatever it is, make it something you will look forward to. 

Of course, the best way to keep yourself in the game is to make it public, or do it with a friend, or both. Accountability rocks!

As I’m transitioning from one book to another, I am thinking about my next writing challenge and how to structure it. What about you? Do you do writing challenges? Do they work for you? How do you structure them? Let us know in the comments!