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The Role of the Twitter Monthly Writing Challenge in Ramping Up Your Productivity

Published by Janell E. Robisch on September 19, 2016

A common question writers have is how they can be more productive and get more done. Joanna Penn from The Creative Penn has some great tips on doing just that.

I’d like to share a method I’ve discovered that combines much of her advice into one single method: the Twitter monthly writing challenge. I didn’t create this method, but it’s been incredible for helping me meet my writing goals.

The Twitter Monthly Writing Challenge

There may be more than one of these dandy little writing challenges in existence, but the one I’m talking about is based at WritingChallenge.org. It’s premise is simple:

Commit to writing 500 words a day, every day. If you are in the editing phase of your current work in progress (WIP), commit to a one hour of editing each day.

via GIPHY

My Experience So Far

My novel is something I picked up about a year ago after letting it fester for a LONG time (the earliest date in my files is 1999) when I recommitted to fiction writing and editing after many years of work on nonfiction writing and academic editing. I’ve been working on it on and off since then. My in-person critique group has been supremely helpful in giving me a once-a-month goal of at least ten new pages. However, it was still slow going, and I kept letting other things take priority over my writing.

Then, in mid-July, I got some great advice while listening to one of Brandon Sanderson’s Brigham Young University lectures on novel writing. In these lectures, Sanderson talks about more than just the craft of writing. He also covers the business of writing. In one lecture, he mentioned that for a serious writer to write about two novels a year, he or she should be writing a at least a couple thousand words a week.

I got to thinking about that. It’s a reasonable goal, even for someone working full time, as long as they are willing to make the writing a priority. I know it’s a long road from part-time to full-time writer (Sanderson and others know it can take 10 years or more), but you gotta start somewhere.

So, I set myself a goal of 500 words a day. I figured that even with misses here and there, it would definitely amp up my word count quickly and help me write at least 2000 words a week. It also reinforced what everyone, Internet memes included, have been telling me: that it’s better to have a complete, awful first draft than to have a few perfect chapters but ne’er a finished draft.

I needed to quit nitpicking over every little word and just get the first draft done, but how could I bring my editor self around to this point of view?

Enter Scrivener

Scrivener is now my go-to program for writing (I am writing in it now). It has this handy-dandy little Project Target window. You can set your goal for each session (in my case 500 words), and it keeps track for you, with a pretty little colored bar that moves from red to green as you get closer and closer to your goal. Yes, I’m using that now too. The Project Target window also keeps track of your overall word count. This is especially handy for novels.

Via Literature and Latte at https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php?show=features
Via Literature and Latte

How did this help me with my editor self? Well, it turns out that Scrivener keeps track of your NET ADDED words for the session. This means that every time I cut something, I have to add at least that many words back plus the 500 to meet my goal. So, I learned that I could edit all I wanted as long as my overall word count was 500 words greater than it had been the day before. I could live with that, especially since I tend to start with skeleton scenes and go back to flesh them out and add detail later. I have the choice every day of writing fresh, new scenes or editing old scenes as long as I am still growing my story (or blog, like I am today).

The Writing Challenge

After I had used my 500-words-a-day goal for about a week, I discovered some of my Twitter friends tweeting about the #AugWritingChallenge. At first, I thought it was just a thing where people would tweet back and forth to help keep each other accountable, but I soon learned there was a website and even a shared spreadsheet to help writers keep track of how they are doing day to day. The monthly writing coaches get in there every day to give encouraging feedback and shout outs to everyone participating. It’s great to be a newbie member of this community.

(Almost) Every day, I get my words done, log them on my own personal spreadsheet, log them into the WritingChallenge.org spreadsheet, and then Tweet my progress and thoughts with the hashtag #SeptWritingChallenge. I make sure to send as much encouragement as I can to other participating writers. Finally, I wait for that nice little shout out from the monthly challenge leader. I do this even on days that I don’t write because I want to give a like to those that made it.

The Results So Far

So, sure I’ve missed some days. In August, I got sidetracked pretty quickly because of a community play I was involved with (didn’t I mention something about priorities earlier?). However, I was committed to climbing back on the bandwagon in September, despite an 11-day travel schedule, and I did.

So, here are my statistics so far for this month:

Sept. 1-Sept 18

Days Participated: 15

Total Added Words: 696 to my journal and 10,616 to my novel

Average Daily Word Count (including skipped days): 628

They may not mean much to you, but if I continue this trend, that’s over 229,000 words a year. Definitely a couple of novels worth (or more)! This is concrete evidence for me that my novel can and will get done. I will get the first draft out and into the editing stage, and I will start on the next.

How the Writing Challenge Fits into Joanna Penn’s Productivity Methods

1. Schedule Your Time: In the writing challenge, you have to log in your words every day before bedtime. This works much better when you have a set time every day to get it done.

2. Reward Yourself: Or have someone else do it for you via the monthly challenge leaders!

3. Become Accountable: You do this by adding your word counts to the database and tweeting your progress every day. You can also help other writers out by liking and retweeting their writing challenge posts and letting them know you are rooting for them as well.

4. Set Deadlines: See #1.

5. Spend More Hours in the Chair: Again, to meet the challenge, you have to put in the time. Five hundred words a day is a perfectly reasonable goal (that you can speed up using dictation) that can result in some big long-term rewards.

Future Goals

I am so psyched about this progress that I am even contemplating participating in National Novel Writing Month (aka NanoWriMo) or the first time this year. In NanoWriMo, the goal is 50,000 words in one month or 1667 words a day. If I don’t do it, it will be because I want to forge ahead to finish this novel before starting another, but it’s definitely worth considering.

I hope some of you will give the monthly writing challenges a try. See you on Twitter!

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New Writing Log Template

Published by Janell E. Robisch on September 3, 2016

Writing Challenges

The past couple of months, I have been participating in writing challenges via Twitter. Think #AugWriting Challenge and #SeptWritingChallenge. Even though I only made it a week or two the first month because of work and other personal commitments (a community play I was in, my kid’s birthday, my anniversary—August was a busy month!), the word count on my WIP jumped tremendously!

The writing challenge also helps me get out of research mode and into the actual writing. It’s easy to get bogged down.  Last night, I started to write a scene and quickly got distracted by researching farmhouses in 19th century Ireland when all I really needed to know was what material the roof might be made of!

Anyhow, so I knew September might be the same because we have a big family trip coming up. I wanted a way outside of just Twitter, although I’ll continue to be accountable there, to keep track of my daily progress and my total jump in word count. I also wanted it to be flexible. Maybe some days, I want to set goals by time, and other days, I want to set them by word count. Sometimes, I really need to edit, and other days, I really need to just get words on the page.

So, here is the result, and I’m making it available for a free download to anyone who wants a copy.

writing log template left

Writing Log Template right

Free Download Formats

  1. PDF: For anyone who wants to print out their log and keep track by hand, here is a PDF version that you can save to your device.
  2. Excel: If you prefer to work log your work electronically, I have created an Excel template. Simply save this file to your device wherever you want it. To create a new monthly log from Excel, click File | New | New From Existing. Then select the downloaded file (it will have an *.xltx extension), and click Create New. After that, save the file with your preferred name, such as “September 2016 Writing Log.” You can use the same original file to create a new log at the beginning of each month.

Let me know how these work for you and if you have suggestions to improve their usefulness. Happy writing!

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New Resources Page!writing resources

New Resources Page!

Published by Janell E. Robisch on July 31, 2016

Today, I added a new feature to my website, a Resources for Fiction Writers page. My goal is for this to be a collection of the best resources available for fiction writers that I have found. I will be adding to it as I remember past ones and find new ones.

The fun part of it is that you can contribute, too. Just leave your favorite resources in the comments section of that page.

I can’t wait to see the kind of resource this grows into.

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Moving Forward When You (or Your Characters) Are Stuckcharacter, motivation, writers block

Moving Forward When You (or Your Characters) Are Stuck

Published by Janell E. Robisch on January 25, 2016

As I was writing along a couple of days ago in the paranormal romance that I am working on, I finished writing a scene that was really exciting. I had done a rough outline of the book to start with, but my plans have recently changed, and my characters’ motivations have changed along with them. So, at this point—as I am mostly pantsing it—I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to keep moving forward.

Anyway, this scene was really intense. It got my blood pumping and my heart racing. I wanted to run over and tell my husband all about it, even though he hasn’t the slightest interest in paranormal romance. However, when I sat down to write the next scene the following day, I felt a little stuck. Now that this big scene was over, there was definitely some conflict between my main characters, and neither knew just what to do to fix it and/or move on. I stared at the screen for a while before closing out Scrivener and switching over to my freelance work.

While I was working, I kept stewing on the situation in my story so that I could get my daily writing in later. At some point, I had my a-ha moment. What I had to do was to go back to the basics for a little while and ask myself questions that would give me the answers that I needed.

In my case, because my characters were not yet ready to kiss and make up, I went back to my character sheets and asked myself the question, “What do my characters do when they are stressed?” I had already answered the question for one of these characters without really realizing it. She liked to hike as a hobby, and she also liked to walk to relieve stress. In an earlier scene, when she was afraid and overwhelmed, she took off and walked the city streets. As for my other character, it was time to develop that side of her as well before moving on. She had already faced a life-or-death situation and reacted quickly, maybe rashly, to save the day (maybe), but how would she react when the woman she loved looked at her with hate in her eyes? Would she analyze it, run away, feed her feelings, take a run, get defensive? The answer to those questions will help me write the next scene and move on with the story. By taking notes, I will also have resources for future scenes that will help me to develop a more fully featured and believable character.

So, if you are stuck and have written an outline or taken notes, go back to your plan and see what is supposed to come next. Examine how your characters would react to the situation at hand in a way that is uniquely their own. If you haven’t got notes or an outline, now is the time to start! In the process, always make sure that your character motivations are well grounded and that the transitions from event to event are believable. It can be easy when outlining to list events A, B, and C without giving reasons why one leads to another.

So, sit down with your story, your notes, and your character sheets and ask yourself some general questions (like “What would X do when Y?”) until you find the answer that helps you move forward. Don’t be afraid to do a little revising of your plot if it doesn’t fit with your excellent characters or to do a little revising of your characters if they don’t fit with an excellent plot. It will give you what you need to keep your story moving forward.

Update October 8, 2016: This one move has helped me immensely since I wrote this six months ago. This book is now over 50,000 words long, and I expect to have finished it by the end of November. Knowing the ways in which my two main characters react to basic situations and feelings has moved the story along in a scene–sequel/action–reaction pace that is natural and feels good to write. I’m still learning and polishing this technique, but it’s proven indispensable!

Resource

“Writing Patterns Into Fiction: Scene and Sequel,” Raven Oak (guest blogger), at Writers Helping Writers

 

 

 

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