2023 Get Started Right Writing Challenge: Guidelines
Get your writing goals started right in 2023 with the first ever Get Started Right Writing Challenge. Writer’s Digest provides free daily tasks for the first week of the January to help writers spring into successful year of writing.
Over the years, I've hosted a few different monthly writing challenges on WritersDigest.com. Those include the annual poem-a-day challenges in April and November (15th year for each in 2022) and a platform building challenge way back in 2015. (And be sure to look out for Moriah Richard's 3rd annual February Flash Fiction challenge in a few weeks.)
The month-long challenges are great feats of dedication and perseverance, but I want to try a few shorter "sprint" challenges in 2023. The first one will begin on January 1, 2023, and it will be focused on getting the year started off right.
What Is the 2023 Get Started Right Writing Challenge?
The 2023 Get Started Right Writing Challenge is a week-long challenge from January 1 to January 7, 2023. Each day, I will provide a task (a task that I will also be completing), and it will be up to writers to finish that task before they take on the next one.
I will try to make them easy enough to accomplish, but they may still present a bit of a challenge to participants (hence, the name). Each task will be created with the goal of helping writers to get their year started off right, regardless of writing genre or level of experience.
It should be a fun warm up for a productive 2023!
Why Should I Participate in the 2023 Get Started Right Writing Challenge?
The top intrinsic benefit is that it should a fun warm up for a productive 2023. If this is like challenges of yore, it'll also be an opportunity to virtually meet other writers and build some excitement with like-minded scribes (even if they write in completely different genres).
But I also have a great (I think anyway) extrinsic benefit for anyone who takes on and completes this free 7-day writing challenge: For anyone who completes all of the prompts and comments on each day's post by midnight on January 8 (giving everyone a "free day" to complete the challenge, because I'm like that), I will give personalized (and still free) feedback on one page of your writing.
That one page could be a query letter, the first page of a story or essay, a poem, a mission statement, or whatever else you can dream up (but only one page--with a 400-word limit for people who know how to manipulate font sizes).
So the question isn't why should you participate, it's why wouldn't you participate?
How Do I Participate in the 2023 Get Started Right Writing Challenge?
The first rule for any of my challenges is to have fun, but here are some others (and since this is the first time we've done this particular challenge, they're subject to small tweaks):
- On January 1, 2023, I'll begin to post a task for each day in the first week of January. Participants will complete each task and comment that the task is complete and/or share their experiences with completing the task (or trying to complete it anyway).
- The challenge will run through January 8, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. (Atlanta, GA, time), because of time zones and stuff. (Note: The last task will be shared on the morning of January 7, 2023, Atlanta time. So I'm giving everyone an extra day to get everything done.)
- Find each day's post either on the WritersDigest.com home page or at the 2023 Get Started Right Writing Challenge page.
- Everyone will be the winner of the intrinsic benefit of participating, but they will need to jump through a few hoops to claim the free extrinsic benefit.
- For the free, personalized feedback on one page of writing, I will expect each participant to comment at least once on each day's post with a good faith effort of completing the task. If by January 8, 2023, at 11:59 p.m., they've completed each day's task and commented on each day's post, then they'll be able to submit their one page of writing to me for some free, personalized feedback.
- I will share more details on how participants can submit their one page of writing to me on the morning (my time) of January 8, 2023, in a "Next Steps" post. That post will include an estimate of when you can expect receipt of the feedback as well.
- Have fun, which is actually the first and last rule of this challenge. This is a free challenge with an intrinsic benefit of getting the year started off right and an extrinsic benefit of some free feedback on your writing from a publishing professional. So my hope is that this will be both fun and helpful!
What If I Have Questions?
The best place to put questions is in the comments of this post (below). And I've included some advice on commenting below.
If you're unable to do that, you can send me an email at rbrewer@aimmedia.com, but be aware that I'll be spending a lot of time with friends and family the last couple weeks of the year and may get behind on my email as a result. So again, if you're able, commenting on each post is the best strategy (in most cases).
Note on commenting: If you wish to comment on the site, go to Disqus to create a free new account, verify your account on this site below (one-time thing), and then comment away. It's free, easy, and the comments (for the most part) don't require manual approval (but I'll be checking every so often, just in case).
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
