For September I’m Doing a 30 Days of Creativity Challenge

I’ve been a long-time believer that writing is a skill that gets better when you work on it, just like any other skill. If you practice the ukulele five minutes a day, you’ll get better. It’s not just about growing the skill, I’ve found; it’s also about building endurance.

(This doesn’t mean, by the way, that you have to write every day, although I believe that in the past that’s helped me, personally, become a stronger writer. Instead I think we should find ways to write regularly, sustainably, at whatever pace or schedule works for us.)

Over the past year and a half, I’ve put this belief into practice by building a habit of writing. I write *something* almost every day, and I’ve also crafted some exercises to help me strengthen what I identified as my weaknesses in writing (delivering emotion, getting to endings, and conveying settings.) 

Now I want to try a challenge where I generate ideas, to train my creativity. For the month of September, I’m going to write at least five ideas a day. I’m going to try both setting aside some time (and mix that up to see if I can identify a better time for my brain!) and I’m also going to try noting down ideas throughout my day. I’m going to be flexible, too, with what I consider as “ideas.” Primarily I’ll focus on ideas for new stories, but if an idea for a current WIP pops into my head, I’m going to count that too!

I’ll be documenting this process daily and posting a a debrief in October to let you all know how it went! But in the meantime, feel free to join me in this experiment for as many days as you’d like!