🎉 Here's How the Morning Writing Challenge Will Work
Starting Monday, November 2 — the first weekday after the time change in the U.S.) — we’ll kick off our #MorningWritingChallenge. (I'll send you a reminder email that morning if you sign up for the mailing list for the challenge above.)
Each day we'll post a photo to Twitter or Instagram tagged with the #MorningWritingChallenge hashtag, with a photo of our early morning writing space, our writing start time, and the length of our planned writing time (even 5 to 15 minutes is a great place to start). Note: We may be writing at different times, the important thing is to find a new morning writing time that works for you. :)
Then, write!
At the end of your writing sprint return to your tweet (or share a new one) or Instagram post and share something that went well as a follow up comment with our #MorningWritingChallenge hashtag and anything else you want to share about your morning writing experience.
Once you've added a comment, click on the hashtag and find three other writers to cheer for the day. I'll be looking for your posts to cheer for you, and sharing mine too.
That's it! Super simple, fun, and a great way to get a new morning writing habit in place.
We'll keep this up through Friday, November 6, cheering for each other along the way.
✨ Prizes ✨
Yes, there are prizes! Each person who enters the challenge by joining the mailing list (above) will be entered to win either a one-month membership to my Called to Write coaching circle ($59.99 value) or a 15-minute 1:1 coaching session ($55 value) with me.
The random drawing will be held on Saturday, November 7th and announced that day. Depending on how many participants we have, we may have multiple prize winners. :)
Morning Writing Challenge FAQ
Can I do the Morning Writing Challenge AND National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? Absolutely! If anything, this writing challenge will give you a boost for your NaNo writing by jumpstarting your writing routine.
Can I participate in the Morning Writing Challenge if I'm already a member of your Called to Write community? Of course you can! Please do! We'll be running our regular writing sprints on our
Called to Write site, and you can use those sprints coupled with the Morning Writing Challenge to give yourself a big burst of writing energy. For the week of November 2nd, we'll be sprinting at 6 a.m., 7 a.m., and 9 a.m. Pacific Time, so you're sure to find a time that works for you. If you're in a later time zone and want to team up with other challengers for an earlier sprint, please make a post on our site. We'll encourage you to post your writing space pictures to Twitter and/or Instagram too, with the goal of helping us spread the word about the challenge. [Not a member?
Join us! All are welcome.]
What about the election? Is this a good time to do a challenge like this? It is definitely a good time to focus on your writing. We don't know what things will look like as a result of the election during our challenge week (and we might not know for some time.) While there will almost certainly be massive ups and downs, major distractions, and who knows what else, writers write. So we'll carve out a small chunk of writing time each morning and THEN deal with the news of the day. We can do this, together!
What about quarantine fatigue? Should we be pushing ourselves right now? My theory is that we're all tired in one way or another, but we owe it to ourselves to keep moving forward on fulfilling our call to write. We don't know how much longer this pandemic will last, and I'd love to see all of us emerging on the other side of it as stronger writers. Also — and this is important — "pushing" can mean many things. My goal is to have you writing for ANY amount of time in the morning, even just for 5 to 15 minutes. It really adds up (I wrote a whole script that way). So let's go!
What if I don't want to post photos of my personal writing space? That's okay! You have options. You could skip posting an image altogether, and simply share a text-only tweet about your writing start time, your planned writing time, and even a note about where you're writing if you'd like (obviously this doesn't work for Instagram). Alternatively, you could post a close up of your screen with something not personal on it as a way of participating without sharing your personal space, or even an image you choose from an
open license photo source like Unsplash that represents your writing mood for the day. I encourage you to find a creative way to join us. 😊
