30 Day Motivation Challenge

I think one of the hardest things to do as a writer is to write. It’s a lonely occupation. Even when you’re in a room full of other writers, working on a project, you are still basically alone with the characters in your head.

Sometimes you sit down to write and notice the dirty dishes in the sink, or the floor that needs vacuumed. You think you’ll just take a couple moments and check your email, or look at a friend’s post on Facebook or Instagram. That one or two minutes turns into an hour, and you’ve suddenly lost all your writing time. Maybe you just don’t feel very inspired to write that day, so you tell yourself you’ll get back into it tomorrow. Except, you don’t.

It’s easy to let life and the internet distract you. But the most important thing you can do if you want to write is to WRITE. I’ve found that if I write a little every day – even if it’s only 200 words – I am more likely to KEEP writing. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? If you can sit down and force yourself to write 200 words every day, no matter what, even if they’re total trash, you’ll find that 200 will soon become 300. Then 400. And then you’ll find yourself writing more and more as you go. There’s something about creating that momentum that really helps to get your creativity flowing.

A while ago, I stumbled across a YouTube video by Victoria Schwab. In it, she talked about how she used a calendar and those gold stars you might remember from elementary school to help keep her motivated. I decided I would try it. I had a calendar, and I had stickers. I set a word count amount for myself. One star = 500 words. And every time I finished a book, I had a set of special, larger stickers. Some people I’ve seen have even got a special sticker for each time they finish a chapter.

It may sound silly, but it’s remarkable how motivating those stars can be. There’s something really satisfying about looking up at my calendar and seeing that visual representation of how much I’ve written… or not.

So before I start my April Creativity prompts, I want to encourage you to create a calendar for yourself. I’ve even made a printable calendar for you to use for the rest of 2018.

But where is the challenge part of this? Well, since I’m telling you all this, I thought it might be good to put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. For 30 days, I’m challenging both myself and you to try and write at least 200 words. I’ll post a photo to my instagram, @VanessaBarger, every Friday, with a photo of my calendar. Every star, for me, will mean I’ve written 500 words. You can set your own word count per star. 100 or 1000, it doesn’t matter – the point is to get writing! If you want to participate, I’d love for you to post a photo of your calendar as well, with hashtag #30daystarchallenge. We can help motivate each other, and celebrate the words as they start to pile up! I’ll start on April 1, and end on April 30. (But you don’t have to stop – I don’t intend to!) To help you get those words in, I’ll also be doing my April Creativity posts again, where every day in April I will provide a different writing prompt.