Why I Failed the 30-Day Writing Challenge, Again

I distracted myself and changed my focus area

Writing challenge progress tracker dashboard — template and screenshot by the author

On August 20th, I pledged to submit another 30 stories to 30 publications within 30 days. As I’m rounding off my recap post on November 1st, you can probably imagine it didn’t go that well.

Round #2: 30 Articles, 30 Pubs, 30 Days

On June 17th, I participated in the challenge for the first time. Although I didn’t hit my goal output, I did “complete” the challenge with 28 posts in 39 days.

This time around, I flunked out.

Looking at my progress spreadsheet, 36 days passed between the first submission in August and the final submission in September. You may think, “Wait, what about those lonely submissions in October?” Well, I finished writing one piece long after the challenge deadline had passed. For another, it took some time to get accepted into a pub.