Seventy Days of Sweat: A Writing Challenge

Care of Alison Kent:

SEVENTY DAYS OF SWEAT: A WRITING CHALLENGE

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the National Novel Writing Month where the goal of the participants is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. You’ve probably also heard of the Book-in-a-Week first draft blast, and may have heard of the Book in a Year challenge at eHarlequin, or simply the One Page A Day method to getting a book written in 365. How ’bout a book in seventy days? Doable? You betcha.

Say you’re writing a 100,000 word single title. 70 days at 1500 words per day (approx 6 pages) is 98,000 words total. Say you’re writing a 60,000 word series romance. 70 days at 900 words per day (approx 4 pages) is 63,000 words total. Writing 4 – 6 pages every day for 70 days is a schedule anyone who calls themselves a pro can handle easily!

So . . . along with Larissa Ione and Stephanie Tyler and Jo Leigh and HelenKay Dimon, I hereby challenge any of you who are interested to sign up for our Seventy Days of Sweat. The challenge begins on Sunday, July 8 and runs through Thursday, September 20. (Yes, that’s 75 days, but we’re giving you off July 11 – 15 if you need it for conference. That said, ask yourself, “What Would Nora Do?” Yes, Nora writes at conference. I’ve witnessed it with my own eyes.)

The rules are simple. You agree to write 4 – 6 pages a day (depending on the length of your book) every day between the dates listed above. If you need to take off a day, you make up the pages another. If you don’t like to write 7 days a week, too bad. This challenge lasts for only 10 weeks, and if you have to get up early on the weekends to get the pages done, you do it. (Hey, we all do it! You can, too!)

You don’t have to have a blog to participate, but we do want you to sign up below so everyone involved can get to know one another. And if you do have a blog, you can post the information there. Going public with your commitment is about owning it. As far as reporting your progress, you’ll come back here each Wednesday and Sunday and post your total word count. (We’ll expect the first reports at LEAST by the 18th, the Wednesday following conference, though for those of you not attending, your first report is due on the 11th!) And those of us sponsoring the challenge will be dropping by your blog (if you have one) and egging you on! AND, we may be adding more sponsors!

The challenge is open to anyone writing in any genre, published and aspiring authors both. Oh, and did we mention there will be prizes? Yes, there will be prizes. Critiques, RT subscriptions, memberships to RWA, gift certificates to B&N – who knows WHAT we’ll come up with! More info on the prizes to come. We’ll also be providing a logo if you’d like to put one on your blog. For now, let’s see a show of hands.

Who’s not afraid to sweat? Sign up [at Alison Kent’s blog].

Obviously, my book is SSG #3. Heroine, Setting, etc. all very well known. And for me, it’s more like fifty-five days instead of seventy. But, otherwise, yeah. I’m in. I won’t be at RWA, but I will be completely unavailable from July 11-15, so it works pretty well.