Challenge Not Accepted

My never-ending struggle with writing challenges

Challenging the idea that ‘challenges’ are the way to get sh*t done

Here I am. I’m talking about it. I’m going to be honest about it and I don’t care who knows it.

I, a writer who thinks about writing more than not, have never managed to complete a 30-day challenge. Not a 30-day yoga challenge, not a 30-day tweeting challenge, and definitely not the monster of all 30-day challenges, NaNoWriMo.

In the last 6 months, I have challenged myself to three — yes, three — writing challenges. A 31-day Ninja Writers-link write-for-10-minutes-every-day-towards-your-current-project challenge, following the daily activities in “How to Write a Memoir in 30 Days: Step-by-Step Instructions for Creating and Publishing Your Personal Story” by Roberta Temes, and NaNoWriMo.

It always starts the same way:

• I get extremely motivated. I can’t wait to start the challenge (usually planned a few weeks from the day I decide I want to participate). I tell everyone I know and post about it on social media in hopes that friends, family, and the lovely strangers of the internet will hold me accountable.
• I invest in a brand new notebook because, well, how could I possibly think about starting a new project in one of my old notebooks? Most of the old notebooks have no more than 15 pages filled, usually from an abandoned project or journaling. I can’t risk the bad jujus from a past failed attempt lingering and poisoning my new, fresh challenge.
• I plan. My planning consists of lists-on-lists-on-lists of what I would like to write about during the course of the challenge. Usually full pages of topics and events I plan to write about, as well as characters (fictional and not) and the topics and/or events they are related to.

And then it actually begins.

Usually I make it seamlessly through days one through five. I wake up energized and make sure that I’m working towards the challenge before I do anything else for the day (apart from my Morning Pages).

Here’s how each of my most recent attempts went:

• October’s NW 10 minutes a day challenge went great. I set myself up with my brand new notebook and set a 10 minutes timer. If I wasn’t able to get out an actual story towards my WIP, I made sure to hash out the elements for expansion at a later time. Writing is writing is writing, right?
• The How-to book was really great because each day explicitly tells you what you should do and how much you should do. Read a few pages then write a few pages? Easy peasy — good thing my new notebook was letter-sized!
• NaNo was the only challenge that I did in a document on my laptop. This was mostly because I was so concerned with precise word counts. I wanted to hit exactly 1,667 every day. I didn’t. I managed about 6,000 in five days. Progress not perfection, right?

Usually by day six I tell myself that I’ve been so good, it’s okay to take a day off. That day off usually turns into about six days off, after which I bravely decide to undertake a catch-up day.

Day twelve is usually catch-up day — where I tell myself I’m going to write all day, but usually do the bare minimum and tell myself “It’s okay, if I just work double every day for the next few days I’ll be fine”.

Then all of a sudden it’s day fifteen; at which point I’ve officially given up and shared my commiseration with the world-link.

I think maybe, just maybe, it’s time for me to accept that I was not made for challenges.

How about you? Do you thrive on writing challenges, or do you have trouble keeping up?