Personally Challenge Yourself to Write More this Year

For the last few years, I’ve provided you with writing and publishing related prompts. This year, I’d like to change things up a bit. I want to offer you a monthly challenge.

Why a challenge?

You must rise to a challenge! It helps you grow, stretch, move through your fears, and take on something you might not if someone hadn’t challenged you to do so.

But I would like you to use my challenges as your personal challenges. Don’t just do them because I challenged you. Do them because you want to challenge yourself.

That means you can’t read them and say, “Nice. I’ll get to that later.” Or “I don’t want to do that…it seems hard.”

Challenge yourself. Take on my challenge as your personal challenge. Respond to it in this manner: “Oh…yeah. That would stretch me a bit…and I’m going to challenge myself to do exactly that.”

Let’s start with an overall, big-picture challenge for the New Year.

Writing Challenge: Write more this year.

This challenge—write more—is deceivingly simple. You only need to sit your butt in the chair and produce more words on paper on a regular basis, right?

Right.

But how will you accomplish that? How will you make sure you do, indeed, sit down, type, and produce work, as in a manuscript or blog post?

Most writers I know don’t write. They just talk about how much they want to write or plan to write.

I want to be sure that’s not you this year…again.

So I’ll ask again: How will you persuade yourself to write consistently and produce more work?

Stumped? Here are a few ways you could take on this challenge…and meet it:

• Block time daily to write first thing in the morning.
• Get up earlier or stay up later than usual to ensure you find time to write. (In other words, make time write.)
• Eliminate distractions that prevent you from writing.
• Get a writing buddy or accountability partner.
• Complete timed writings—write for 30 minutes as fast as you can without stopping.
• Set deadlines…and meet them.

What stops you most often from writing? Be honest. No excuses like “I don’t have time.” You do have time…You make time for other things…like watching television, for example.

Once you know the biggest obstacle you need to overcome, develop three strategies to overcome it. For example, if your biggest obstacle is distractions, you might:

-Turn off the internet while you write. -Unplug or turn off the phone.
-Close the door to your office and put a sign on it that says, “Do not disturb!”

Then start writing more…every day, every week, every month, and all year long.

You can do it. It’s your time to make a powerful and meaningful difference with your words. But to do that…you must write!

Ready to take on the challenge? Go!

 

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