A lot of people have recently been disappointed with the controversy surrounding the popular NaNoWriMo challenge. (If you aren’t familiar with the story, I’ll just link an article for you to read through when you have the time.) Coming at a time when people might need a distraction from daily life, a personal challenge, or some writing therapy, it can be frustrating to find a creative outlet become itself embroiled in modern stresses and controversy.
Now, perhaps, you are one of the people who looked forward all year to the month of November not for the huge dinner (Ok, not just for the huge dinner) but for the chance to participate in the annual word gluttony.
Or perhaps, you haven’t been a regular participant but were thinking of giving it a go this year for the first time.
Perhaps you haven’t even heard of any of this but like the idea of writing and are looking for a way to get a little boost in a fun challenge.
This post is here to remind you that you have the power to create your own personal writing challenge this November. You don’t need anyone’s permission.
It doesn’t even have to be in November. If you have several friends who usually participate, you can get a group together, anytime, and make your own challenge. Or go it alone.
Make your own goals. It can be for a week, a month, six months, a year. You can write a novel in a month, a short stories, flash fiction, poems, songs, edit an existing work.
You don’t need permission. It’s your writing. You get to decide what your goals are.
And finally, perhaps you still want to participate in NaNoWriMo. Maybe, right now, you just need the comfort of the familiar, the yearly routine. Connections and friendships made over the years in any kind of hobby community are important, especially now. You don’t need anyone’s permission for that, either.
Just to get you started, here’s a short (completely incomplete) list of possible challenge ideas:
- Write a novel in a month (obviously)
- Write a short story every week
- Write a poem every week
- Write a new flash piece every day
- Take an interesting photograph once a week, then spend the rest of the week writing a story about it
- Grab a book of writing prompts and go through them, one per day for a month
- Find an existing book or story that you hate, and rewrite it in a month
- Edit the tangled mess of an old novel you have in a drawer (maybe from a previous November) and try and polish it in a month
- Set up a weekend writing retreat–by yourself or with others. Join an existing one
- Submit a story to one short fiction writing contest per month. (There are some great ones that are free to enter!)
- Write, shoot, and edit and a silly short film in a month
- Get a sketch book and draw a picture a day (They’re worth a thousand words each, after all!)
Once you find a challenge that works for you, it can help to tell the people in your life, both because it can add a feeling of accountability and to let them know why you might be busy sometimes and need some space. Also, they can cheer you on!
The important thing for any of these challenges is just to make the time for yourself, make time for your art, and have fun.
In the two decades since, I found myself drifting through several jobs that just paid bills. I have worked as a photographer, a truck driver, tour manager, and online marketing consultant. Finally, the most recent decade, I have settled for working as a software engineer. It pays well, and is something I am actually pretty good at. But I find myself longing to go back to the roots of what I really want to do—what my earlier college career should have told me I need to do—write.
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