In Today’s Journal
* The Bradbury Challenge: Expanded!
* The Stephen King Challenge Resurrected
* The Power of a Streak
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
The Bradbury Challenge: Expanded!
The Bradbury Challenge is easily the longest-running challenge I’ve ever issued in TNDJ.
Back in the day, Ray Bradbury advised writers who want to learn to write fiction to write at least one short story per week for a year because nobody can write 52 ‘bad’ short stories in a row.
Truedat.
Now, the whole point of the Challenge is to have fun and grow as a writer. But not everyone writes fiction. So I figured why not open it up a little?
- If you write personal essays instead of short stories, you can now join in the challenge.
- And of course, if you write short stories, feel free to jump in.
There is no cost. The only requirement is to write at least one short story (or essay) each week.
Then if you want TNDJ to help hold your feet to the fire so you can build a writing streak—and trust me, you want to build a writing streak—send me the title, word count, and genre in the following format:
“Title” 2345 Genre
Notice that there’s no punctuation and no extra words (like commas or “2345 words“).
I’m lazy. If you send it in that format I can copy/paste directly from your email into the weekly report without having to delete extra stuff.
The Rules
- No fee.
- Report to me via email each week before the Journal goes live on Monday morning. (I recommend setting yourself a Sunday midnight deadline.)
- No limit on the number of stories or essays per week.
- Jump in at any time (but please do so with the intent to continue and build a streak).
During the past week, in addition to whatever other fiction they’re writing, the following writers reported these new stories:
- Erin Donoho “The New Girl” 3000 YA contemporary
- Loyd Jenkins ” (Late)
- Vanessa V. Kilmer ” (Late)
- Christopher Ridge “Stitches” 2235 Horror
- KC Riggs “Caution! Flying Cats” 2727 Humor
- Dave Taylor “Teddy the Bastard” 3,456 Paranormal/horror
Congratulations to these writers!
The Stephen King Challenge Resurrected
I’m also opening up The Stephen King Challenge again.
Prolific writer Stephen King has famously written that he strives to write at least 1000 words of fiction per day.
So for any long-form (novels, novellas) writers out there, if you want me to help hold your feet to the fire, strive to write, on average, at least 1000 words per day on your novel or novella.
Note “on average.” So if you write 1200 words on Monday, nothing on Tuesday, and 2000 words on Wednesday, that’s still a daily mean average of 1066 words per day for those three days.
For this challenge, you want to maintain at least a 1000 wpd average over every seven days.
Then send me the title of your novel, the word count for the week (you can start with a ‘brought forward’ number for words you’ve already written), and genre.
Please use the same format I listed under the Bradbury Challenge above.
For ease of remembering, we’ll use the same deadline too (Sunday midnight each week).
If anyone jumps in, I’ll report The Stephen King Challenge with The Bradbury Challenge every Monday.
The Power of a Streak
In the first segment above, I mentioned if you jump into the Bradbury Challenge you should do so with building a writing streak in mind.
Why? Because you’ll learn more about writing from putting new words on the page in your chosen literary genre (essay, short or long fiction) than anyone else (even I or Dean) can teach you.
I doubt anyone else will tell you that, but it’s true.
And that’s where the power of a writing streak comes in. Once you begin to build a writing streak, the streak gains power.
And when the streak is established, it drives you to the keyboard even on those days when your conscious mind tells you there are other things you need to be doing.
A Few Ways to Build a Writing Streak
I wrote these with fiction in mind, but they work for creative nonfiction too:
Numbers—This is the best, easiest, and most important way to build a writing streak.
Note that when I say “important,” I’m talking about the writing, not the individual story or novel or essay. Remember,
- THAT you write is important because, duh, you’re a writer.
- But WHAT you write, the individual project, doesn’t matter in the slightest. The importance of any story, novel, or essay is strictly up to the reader.
Plus, remember that if you set a daily word count goal, it doesn’t matter into which work(s) those words go.
For years, my daily goal was to write 3000 words per day. Most days those went on a single short story or into a novel. But on many days, some of the words would go into a novel, and some would go into a separate short story.
All that mattered—all that was ‘important’—was that I reached or exceeded my 3000 wpd goal. If I hadn’t set that goal way back in the day, no way would I have written 117 novels, 10 novellas, and 300 short stories in around 9 years.
So to establish a streak with numbers, set a daily word count goal. Then focus on reaching or exceeding that goal every day that you write.
You might accomplish your goal in two, three, four or more sessions per day on days that you write. If you have only snippets of time instead of a block of time, a good motto is “Keep Coming Back.” Do that until you reach or exceed your daily word count goal.
Note too that you will fall short of your goal on some days. That’s fine. A daily word count goal resets to zero every morning anyway. Shrug. Every day is a new day.
Frequency—If you have time and are able, either write every day or write on a set number of days per week. Whatever schedule you set, I recommend you set it in concrete.
Caution: Be ready. Your conscious, critical mind will do its best to tell you that you don’t actually have time.
But most people (even caregivers or those with outside jobs) can scratch out an hour per day for writing. That’s a thousand words per day (so 30,000 words per month). If you have more time, good.
Either way, make writing fiction your number one priority during your writing time.
Barring a personal emergency (e.g., your house is literally on fire and the door to your writing space is glowing), don’t let anything or anyone shake you off your schedule.
Projects—The Bradbury Challenge falls into this category. Challenge yourself to write and finish at least one project every day or every week or every month or every quarter.
The Bottom Line
No matter what catalyst(s) you choose to establish a writing streak, soon the streak itself will take over and you’ll realize you can’t NOT write. If you’re a writer, that’s a great feeling.
The streak itself will drive you to your laptop or other device to write more so you won’t break your streak. And THAT is the true power of the streak.
I didn’t mention any prizes for the Challenges above, but if you’re successful and there’s anything of mine that you want, please feel free to ask. Chances are good you’ll get it.
I suggest defining “successful” as writing 52 short stories or essays in a row for the Bradbury Challenge or completing a novel or novella with an average daily word count (for writing days) of at least 1000 wpd.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: Civility & Incivility A day late. Sorry.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 1290
Writing of Blackwell Ops 47: Sam Granger | Special Duty
Day 1…… 3250 words. To date…… 3250
Day 2…… 1110 words. To date…… 4360
Day 3…… 3323 words. To date…… 7683
Day 4…… 1656 words. To date…… 9339
Day 5…… 1413 words. To date…… 10752
Day 6…… 3135 words. To date…… 13887
Fiction for September……………… 3135
Fiction for 2025………………………. 534149
Nonfiction for September.………… 6190
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 192440
2025 consumable words…………….. 718975
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 13
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………….. 117
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 301
Short story collections……………………. 29