The 52 Week Writing Challenge

This year, I am committing to write one short story every week.

I’ll be doing this with the lovely and talented people from the Writing Cooperative and the 2017 52 Week Writing Challenge. There’s only one rule: you write a Thing every week for 52 weeks.

I picked short stories, because I think it will help me build up my portfolio, and my writing-resume. I want to have something I can submit to magazines, while I’m working on my latest revision.

Okay, and maybe have something I can point to as progress, as success, along the way. Look, ma! I am a real writer.

I write Science Fiction and Fantasy–that’s what the novel I’m revising is–and some mysteries and thrillers (my trunk novel, and some of the unrevised gigabytes on my hard drive.) Most of my challenge stories will probably wind up being in those genres.

I’ll probably wind up using four of the stories in April, during the A-to-Z Challenge, and probably another four for the StoryTime Blog Hop. Those will wind up here, on Reprobate Typewriter. If I get another invitation to write in the Advent Calendar, I’ll probably use one of them there.

That leaves me… well, some mathy and improbably large number… of leftover stories that I can peddle to the general population.

If you’re interested in reading some of what I write, here are direct links to some of my short stories:

 

If you’re thinking of accepting the 52 Week Writing Challenge, let me know what you’re doing, and what your goals are, so we can cheer each other on. Look me up. My Medium Profile is Here.

 

9 Comments

    • Reply

      It’s not too bad, but the finishing things part is the big challenge for me right now. I’m usually down to the buzzer on projects.

  1. Reply

    Good luck! This seems like a great challenge.

    I love the idea of writing a short story each week, but I think I’m going to focus my writing more around revising my novel. Somehow the challenge of writing a short story every two months doesn’t sound as grand.

  2. Reply

    52 short stories? An impressive goal, but I feel like if I tried to aim for that I’d end up with two short stories and three books instead.

    I’ll be in novel writing land for most of the year but good luck with all of your stories!

  3. Reply

    Sounds like an interesting challenge. I want to write more stories this year. Maybe not as many as 52, but enough to challenge me to work on stories or at least get me thinking of stories. Also, I want to try my hand at writing in different genres. Science fiction is speaking to me right now, but maybe trying fantasy or romance or a combination of different genres.

    I would be more than happy to offer my assistance with helping you meet your goals. Maybe we can help each other out.

  4. Reply

    I’ve decided to commit to the challenge too 🙂 I don’t have medium, so I’m going to use my wordpress account instead. If I sign up to anything else right now, I fear I will become overwhelmed!

    To keep myself on track, I’m hosting a weekly writing prompts event on my blog and twitter. I will post a different prompt on twitter each week, and write around that prompt on my blog. I’ll aim for about 500-1000 words. I’ll also aim for a good 140 character sentence within that, which I can post to Twitter.

    I hope that I can get a few other people interested in the prompts too, so that we can all motivate each other 🙂

    I like your idea of building a portfolio, that’s really practical. I look forward to seeing what you write, especially if there are more dragons 🙂

    • Reply

      I’ll have to stop by and check out the prompts. I can always use a good prompt!
      I’ll be writing something for the January StoryTime Blog hop. I’m not sure what, yet, but there could definitely be dragons. I think it’s open to outside writers this time, so you should think about joining in.

      • Reply

        I just checked back here by chance and saw your reply: I swear that I had checked the ‘receive follow up comments by email box,’ but I hadn’t received anything!
        I love writing prompts too, it’s nice to have something that triggers a scene!
        Where is the StoryTime Blog hop hosted? I had noticed it before, but I got a bit confused about how it works.
        If I can find the time, I might give it a go. These first two weeks of January have been a blur to me. I’ve spent them ill, and gotten very little done, so I’m now playing catch up!

        • Reply

          Right now, we’re rotating through hosts’ private websites, but there’s a StoryTime website in the works. This time around, JunetaKey.com is hosting. Look in the sidebar on the right for the hop.
          We’d love to have you. Glad you’re feeling better.

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