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Writing Challenge

Mystery Ending

This weekly writing challenge focuses on the “weekly” part — start your post today, and build on it for the next four before publishing. Who knows where you’ll end up?

Let’s think beyond a single post written with a single focus, and lean toward the “weekly” part of “weekly writing challenge”: you’ll start your post today, but revisit and add to it over the next several days. Watch your ideas morph and grow — you may even be surprised where your post ends up, like playing a solo, written game of “Telephone.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re starting this challenge on Monday or not — if you don’t get to it until later in the week, that’s fine. Just do as many of the days as you can, and publish it before the next challenge is posted.

First, the easy part: start a new post about anything you’d like. It can be a post you’ve been thinking about writing for a while or an idea that just came to you — the subject and format is completely up to you.

Start writing. A paragraph or two is fine, but so is a finished post. The catch? Don’t publish it, because you’re not actually done yet. Save your post as a draft.

Now, the “challenge” part of this challenge: every day for the next four days, open your draft and add to/edit what you’ve already written to fold in something new. Here’s your progression:

  • Day One: start your post.
  • Day Two: add a quote from a conversation you had with someone today (an email, instant message, or text conversation is fine, too).
  • Day Three: add something related to what your childhood self wanted to be when you grew up, or a dream you have for your future.
  • Day Four: add a reference to something currently in your refrigerator.
  • Day Five: add something inspired by a song you heard today. If you didn’t hear any music, use something you read (and turn on the radio!).

After the end of Day Five, give it a final read and polish, then hit “publish” — challenge complete.

You can interpret these four elements literally, and tell us about your Tupperware of leftover meatballs and your shattered four-year-old dream of being an astronaut ballerina fireperson, or you can just pull inspiration from each of them, and work more figurative ideas into your post. It’s not important that we be able to see each of these four elements in your finished post, just that you figure out how to weave them in. The more seamless, the better.

The goal here isn’t for you to totally refocus your post every day — unless that’s what you want to do. It’s to push you to examine how all your ideas (and your life experiences) intersect, and to see what you can learn about yourself and your writing process by actively creating new layers in your post.

Today is your Day One. Ready, set, write.

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  5. Great idea! 🙂 It is rather strange for me to edit and article over and over again,but I guess it’s never too late! I am deffinitely going to try this out! 🙂

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  9. I usually edit and re-edit my posts over several days, so I think today’s challenge is a very good idea.
    I’m actually working on a complex post right now, so I think this challenge will help me get the post polished and spot on!
    It’s about what makes a book, fascinating, great, ordinary, or not worth reading.
    Which objective parameters could be used to help us review, appreciate books, and advise authors on how to improve their work?
    Day 1 is done and saved as a draft.
    I’ll let you know how I get on tomorrow!

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  18. I just started my blog last week and today I was thinking about what my next post should be about (the possibilites are endless), this sound really interesting to try 🙂

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  22. This is basically how I write. I know no other way. It takes me months to pull something together. I write a draft and usually sit on it for weeks, if I have the luxury. I am a firm believer in quality content instead of the deluge that besieges us daily rife with typos and subjects that make no sense.

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