Webb Writing Challenge - Part 2

 

This weekend I volunteered at my church bingo - five hours of running around handing out bingo cards, prizes and remembering to never wish them good luck (apparently this is taboo in the bingo world). I got started as a volunteer because I would rather work than actually play bingo. So, when I sat down to write this month's post I had all things bingo on my mind. Naturally, with the wild way my brain works bingo cards reminded me of reading challenges on bingo-like cards which reminded me of a writing challenge I gave everyone about a year ago.

Are you done yet?

I hope so since I have a new challenge. Since that challenge focused on fiction writing, I thought I'd give you a nonfiction writing challenge this time around. Use the card above to write your way to a bingo (four corners counts), a picture frame or pull out all the stops and write your way to a cover all. It's a great excuse to stretch those writing muscles and try new things. Don't forget to tell me how you're doing with the challenge!

1. Flash pieces - Can you express yourself in 1000 words or less? WOW's Creative Nonfiction Essay Contest is accepting entries right now but there are quite a few markets accepting flash writing.

2. Hit the Road - Write something based on travel -- anything from a description of your favorite place to travel tips to an essay on your dream journey.

3. Pleased to Meet You - Chat with someone you find interesting (your favorite author, your partner, the woman who owns your local coffee shop) and create a piece based on that interview. You never know what you'll learn or what other ideas will spring from that interaction.

4. Let's Laugh - Can you make your readers laugh? It's harder than you think! Craft an essay, article or even a how-to that will give everyone the giggles.

5. Outside Your Window - Focus on nature for your next piece. Maybe a description of the beauty you see in the autumn colors, an article about gardening, or even something about surviving a hurricane.

6. Hometown Happenings - What about your hometown could be interesting to the big wide world? Maybe a quirky local event, a famous resident, a vacation destination, a local food. I've written articles for national publications about local artists, local charities, the origin of nearby town names, a high school history class that build a Viking ship.

7. Be the Expert - I've written advice based articles about saving money at Disney World, shopping at consignment shops, encouraging a reluctant reader and book marketing. Where are you an expert? 

8. Listicles - They're everywhere: the ten best chocolate chip cookies in the grocery store, five towns every Civil War enthusiast has to visit, four holiday traditions to skip and four holiday traditions you can't miss. These are quick, fun pieces to write and can often find a home with online magazines.

9. Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept It - It's a challenge to write something that will stand out when everyone else is writing about the same topic. Check out Readers Write for The Sun Magazine and call outs from places like Business Insider and All Recipes. When creating a piece based on an assigned topic, strive to find a unique twist.

10. Review - Yes, you could review a book but that's not the only review gig in town. Review music, toys, power tools, events.

11. Pick a Side - Find a controversial topic (no, you don't have to go straight to politics) and pick a side. Right now the big online discussion is "Should You Take an Iced Coffee to a Job Interview?" Maybe your writing will start the next big discussion.

12. History - Turn back the clock and find something interesting in the past to write about. It could be your personal history or something about a company, town, celebrity, sports team, even your favorite food.

13. Hermit Crab - Write a personal essay disguised as something else: a recipe, a police report, a letter to your congressman.

14. Delicious - Why are cooking reality shows so popular? We all love food! So write about it. You can teach readers how to cook, share memories of a significant food in your family, discuss the latest trend (please, can something take the place of pumpkin spice), even a humorous piece about your epic fail in the kitchen.

15. For the Kids - Turn to a younger audience and craft an article, quiz, activity, or interview just for them on your favorite topic. There are plenty of kids magazines focuses on everything from history to science to cooking to world cultures.

16. That's New - Can't think of any ideas? Learn something new! Take a class in pottery. Read a book about fly fishing. Volunteer at your poll place. Maybe you won't write about that specific topic but it may give your brain a boost to another idea.

 

Jodi M. Webb writes from her home in the Pennsylvania mountains about everything from apple pie to consignment shops to travel. She's also a blog tour manager for WOW-Women on Writing. Follow her writing (and reading) life at Words by Webb. 

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Gear Up for Fall

by Marcia Peterson

Summer distractions probably caused you to place some of your writing projects on the back burner. However, back-to-school time can offer a fresh start for writers. It’s a great opportunity to “reboot” your writing life.

If you’re unsure about how to get going again, a few strategies can help you gear up for the approaching fall months. Here are three ways to dive back in, create momentum and get excited about your writing.

Challenge Yourself

First, freelancers can build an active writing schedule with a self-created query challenge. Make a commitment to send out a certain amount of queries or submissions per week, starting now. This will get you in a writing frame of mind and, as you send more and more out, you’ll generate new assignments to work on.

To bolster your commitment to this endeavor, be sure to seek outside support. Sometimes you can participate in group query challenges that various writing sites offer. Alternatively, you can share your submission goals with fellow writers, then check in occasionally with progress reports to keep yourself on track.

Fiction writers can set up a daily word count challenge, or resolve to complete one short story per month. Like the freelancers, you can make your goals public with writing friends for accountability. At this time of year, you might also consider NaNoWriMo, which occurs every November. If you decide to participate, spend the next month or so planning your project and preparing your life for a successful novel challenge experience.

Take a class

Another way to ignite your writing life is to copy the kids and go back to school. Classes offer the ideal way to create structure in your writing world, which really helps when you’re getting back into production mode. The assignments make you focus on your writing, and working on new things gives you a boost.

Now is the best time to research your available options, in order to sign up for popular fall classes. Look through local and online class offerings for something that piques your interest—maybe a class in a new area of writing, or something related to your usual genre for renewed passion and continued improvement.

Enter Contests

Contests provide two of the most important things an off-track writer needs: a prompt (or theme) and a deadline. Winning is a great, but you can be proud of entering a quality piece regardless of the outcome. Just by crafting an entry, you’ve added something new to your body of work.

Spend some time now researching upcoming contests that may suit you. The idea is to pick at least one that you will enter very soon, and get that date on your calendar. You can take it further by making a plan to enter several contests by the end of the year. Contests are a great motivator, and lots of fun too.

* * *

Check out WOW! Women on Writing’s upcoming classes and contest deadlines. Happy fall writing!

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1 comment fall, Marcia Peterson, online writing classes, reboot, writer inspiration, writing challenge, writing contest, writing goals

NaNoWriMo: Are We Done Yet?

So we’re close to the midpoint of November and that means—for those of you participating in NaNoWriMo—that you’re about halfway along in your journey, assuming you haven’t pulled out your hair and run screaming from your laptops. But I feel like I need to lay a little truth on you: if you’re reading this, I suspect you might already be in the weeds.

Because the diligent-and-on-track NaNoWriMo participant doesn’t have time for reading blog posts or much of any other shenanigans…like eating or sleeping. The writer who’s got around 25,000 words is rather smugly humming along and we kind of despise her (or him).

But it’s not too late for you to become smug and detestable yourself. I’ve got a few tips to get you back on track and though you may not finish with the Great American Novel ready for submission, you WILL finish with…well, something. (Your lost hair is on you.)

Tip One: Make a Plan

Yes, I know, you’re a pantser. You don’t plan, you just write, write, write and it’s all whiskers on kittens and kisses on mittens or whatever. Until it’s mid-November and suddenly it’s Nightmare on NaNo Street because you have pantsed your way to 5,347 words.

Uh-oh. MAKE A PLAN. Take a look at the number of days you have left (18) and consider realistically the number of days you will write. That means, friends, that if you haven’t written on Saturday yet, don’t count Saturdays, okay? Next, assign a goal to each day you will write. But you cannot give yourself two days off in a row. And that’s not because I’m being a meany-pants; I have a very good reason for this part of the plan.

I know this requires a bit of math and figuring so I’ll give you a few minutes to make a plan. And no, you cannot wait till tomorrow.

Tip Two: Do Not Backtrack

When I am working on a manuscript, even a first draft, I will write, write, write. And then the next time that I go to the manuscript, I will go back and read what I wrote, wrote, wrote. Sometimes, I’ll dump it all and start fresh. Sometimes, I should have dumped it all but I edit, trying to make it nice. The point is, I edit as I go.

If you’re doing NaNoWriMo, going back over what you’ve written is the kiss of manuscript death. There is no time for editing or finding your voice; there’s not even time to fix some egregious grammar mistake (and seriously, I shuddered just writing that last bit). Just plow ahead with writing no matter what. But—and here’s a big but—that’s easier to do if you write every day.

Writing every day, even if it’s just 500 words, keeps your mind entrenched in the manuscript as well as your butt in the chair. And once there, you’ll probably write more because you’re doing off-to-the-races writing! So if you want to revise that plan you made (the one where you skipped writing on Saturdays), I’ll wait.

Tip Three: Accept Imperfection

Now you have a plan that may or may not mean you have to write 2, 471 words per day for the next 18 days. You have vowed that when you sit down to write, you will not, under penalty of manuscript death, look at any words you have written before but will have at it, mid-sentence if need be. But come November 30th, you must face that what you have written—and really, with no editing what can you expect?--could be a pile of steaming word mush (to put it politely). But that’s okay. Because you’ll be done with NaNoWriMo and you’ll have a 50,000-ish word manuscript-ish.

We shall talk about revision tips on January 1st.

~Cathy C. Hall

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6 comments Cathy C. Hall, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, novel writing tips, writing challenge

The Rights and Wrongs of NaNoWriMo

Here it is, just two days from the start of NaNoWriMo, and I feel compelled to offer my annual advice concerning this November writing event. But first, for the uninitiated, a quick look at National Novel Writing Month:

National Novel Writing Month started twenty years ago and I suspect that in the beginning, it was just a fun writing challenge to give a group of coffee shop writers a way to get out of holiday preparations. Preparations that twenty years ago began—if you can believe it—on November 1st. “Sorry, hon, can’t put those lights up, got a novel to write!” Or “Oh, sweetie, I’d love to fix Thanksgiving dinner for your extended family of ninety, but this darn old novel is not gonna write itself!”

Fast forward to today, where thousands—thousands upon thousands—of writers from all over the world join together via the internet, challenging themselves to finish a 50,000 word novel before November 30th. There are virtual and actual writer meet-ups, lots of pep talks from famous writers, badges to be won, and products with the NaNoWriMo logo to be bought.

So here we are, writers, pondering or perhaps already planning, our NaNoWriMo. And here I am, throwing out my thoughts on what’s right and what’s wrong with this challenge:

What makes NaNoWriMo fun and incredibly helpful and right for a certain kind of writer is the community and the encouragement that one gets in participating. Accountability can be a strong motivator and there is nothing like a challenge (with bragging rights!) to get competitive juices flowing.

But that community can also be what makes it wrong. If you are the kind of writer that will get overly involved with the social side of NaNoWriMo, using all your time chatting and whatnot rather than writing and whatnot, then NaNoWriMo may not be a good fit for you.

Unless, the writing is secondary and you are looking at long last for community. Sign up right now if you want to meet (virtual or actual) writing buddies!

But if writing an actual novel is your primary aim in joining NaNoWriMo, we need to take a closer look at achieving that goal within this challenge.

Fifty thousand words is a lot of words, y’all, but it is not a typical adult novel. (If you’re writing a novel for middle grade or possibly even young adult, then whee! You’re done!) What is right about using NaNoWriMo is that it can get a writer who has a great concept and a good idea of where he or she wants to go with it, off and running, and even push him or her almost to the finish line of a novel. But a plan or outline prior to the challenge is really helpful. You’ll need 1,667 words per day to get ‘er done so this is where a plotter can shine whereas a pantser might write seven pages about the flowers in the park whilst working out what to do about the killer who was accidentally killed off 27,674 words ago.

Then again, pantser or plotter, both may indeed “win” the challenge. And here is what is wrong about NaNoWriMo: a writer is spending a lot of one’s precious working time to put words on a page but one can easily end up with a little—and by a little, I mean a lot—of drivel. So is it worth it?

Well, you might have a novel of sorts, not to mention that pretty legit-sounding excuse, at least for November, am I right?

(Or wrong? What do you think about NaNoWriMo?)

~Cathy C. Hall

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8 comments Cathy C. Hall, NaNoWriMo, November writing goals, plotter or pantser, writing challenge

A Giving Kind of Writing Challenge

I woke up this morning thinking about a few people on my shopping list and wondering what I would give them. I had a couple writing projects still to finish as well, and so before I even completely opened my eyes, my brain was pinging with all these challenges.

And that, my friends, is an inside look into a writer’s brain and how lounging about in bed can sometimes lead to a splendiferous idea. To wit:

This December, how about challenging yourself to give a few words to the writers you know? Just a teensy bit of your time and talent, little thoughts here and there to spread a little writer cheer.

Do you have a writer friend who has a blog? Write a comment on the latest post, thanking her (or him) for all the words shared and enjoyed.

How about those friends who are published in magazines? You can often find the online version of the magazine, and you can read the story or article and leave a comment there.

But maybe your writer friend has a story in an anthology, a Chicken Soup for the Soul kind of book. That calls for a personal email, just a quick note of congratulations.

And of course, if your writer friend has her very own book, you can take a moment to leave that nice review you’ve been meaning to write. Or maybe “like” a review that’s already listed. Take a picture of the book if you see the title out in a bookstore or library and share the spotting in your social media with a “Hey! Look at my friend’s fabulous book.” A little writer recognition (and promotion) is always great for lifting spirits.

Or maybe your writer friend’s been generous with critique, a line edit, or terrific feedback on something you’ve written. Maybe she’s sat through hours long lunches, commiserating. Give that friend a heartfelt note of appreciation.

Spend a few extra moments lounging about in bed and get creative with your own ideas for this splendiferous December writing challenge. Then take a moment or two to send a kind word here and there to writers you love. I promise you’ll prove that old adage correct.

It really is better to give than receive!

~Cathy C. Hall

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14 comments Cathy C. Hall, writing challenge

Book Review – The 30 Day Writing Challenge by Sara Crawford

The 30-day Writing Challenge claims to help readers begin or enhance their daily writing habit. Whether you are a writer, blogger, or journaler this book is for you! Author Sara Crawford encourages and inspires writers of all skill levels by challenging us to ‘stretch our writing muscles’ and create a daily writing habit. The daily writing exercises and prompts focus on technique, inspiration and craft while covering the different genres of writing.

Crawford does an excellent job being real with readers. I fell in love with her book after reading the following paragraph:

I would like to acknowledge that in my own writing, I constantly do the things that I say you shouldn’t do. I am far from perfect. Every writer has room to grow and improve, and I include myself in that. However, I strive to be a better writer each and every day, and I live by these rules, principles, and ideas in my own creative life.

I really admire someone who can be themselves and I felt encouraged instead of judged after reading this small tidbit. It made it much easier to move forward with the exercises and I felt like Crawford understood me. I missed a day here or there but feel this is the type of book I can pick up again and again. This isn’t something you do once and forget about.

In many ways The 30-day Writing Challenge reminds me of a diet. Sure, I can lose weight quickly, but if I don’t continue with good eating habits, the weight is going to creep back on. If I want to be successful, I need to stick with it, even after the initial success. Similarly, if I use The 30 Day Writing Challenge to get on track and then set it aside instead of faithfully writing and practicing my craft, I am going to falter.

Thank you Sara Crawford for providing a fun and encouraging book to help build successful writing habits. The 30-day Writing Challenge is a great book for anyone who enjoys writing, blogging, or journaling!

Sara Crawford has a BA in English from Kennesaw State University and an MFA in Creative Writing (emphasis in Playwriting) from the University of New Orleans. She is represented by Marie Brown Associates, and she is the author of upcoming young adult novel, The Muses.

Previous publications include her play, The Snow Globe, from YouthPlays, Driving Downtown to the Show (Lulu Press) and Coiled and Swallowed (Virgogray Press). In addition, her poetry has appeared in Burlesque Press, Cermony, Share: Art and Literary Magazine, and Illogical Muse.

Find out more about Sara by visiting her website: http://saracrawford.net/

Crystal is a church musician, business owner, active journaler, writer and blogger as well as a dairy farmer. She lives in Reedsville, Wisconsin with her husband, three young children (Carmen 6, Andre 5, Breccan 5 months), two dogs, two rabbits, four little piggies, and over 200 Holsteins. You can find Crystal blogging and reviewing books and all sorts of other stuff at: http://bringonlemons.blogspot.com/

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2 comments 30 Day Writing Challenge, book review, building good writing habits, sara crawford, writing challenge, writing habits