LensqPhew! It’s 31st July finally! My 30-day blogging challenge ended yesterday. I anticipated the journey to be tough but it was more than tough even after taking precautions. But it made me accomplish my goal of writing regularly. I was struggling so hard to make that habit for the past few months. Finally now, with the help of 30 posts this month, the number of posts on my blog became 76. It is definitely an achievement for me.
What made the challenge tough?
Topics:
Even though I made a list of topics initially, I could not stick with them. When I sat down to write on them, I felt I was not doing justice to the topic. For the topics where I had the outline ready, I did not like the outline at all. Consequently, I had to find a new topic every day to write. I used to waste crazy amount of time in just finding the right prompt to write on. I used to feel so tired in searching for the topic that by the time I sit to write I would have already exhausted my quota of patience.
Content:
When I write something, I want it to be the best. But on a few days, I felt that I was not able to do justice for the topic. After writing 300 words, I had to abandon it because I found it cliche. On other days, I was able to write in chunks but could not connect them. After a few days into the challenge, I felt that my writing was becoming routine. I found myself writing the same thing in a different way. I found my experience to be limited and I had to dig deep into my life to scrap the routine story I was writing to bring on the new ones.
Timing:
I was not waking up early enough to write in the mornings. Even if I did, that time went away in searching for a topic to write. The only time I had was to write in the evenings after day-time work. Unfortunately, July was one of the most hectic months and I was using my brain too much at office. It was a punishment everyday to come back and look at the blank screen to start writing. On a few days, I was on the verge of tears for selecting this challenge in the first place. It was close to impossible for me to write after a tiring day. It was difficult for the thoughts to flow and then edit what I have written. On a few days, I was so drowsy that I was writing from my subconscious mind.
Key lessons I learnt:
Nothing is impossible:
From the time I started blogging, I always thought that it was impossible to write regularly. But now, I wrote for 30 days continuously. If you really want something, you can fight all the odds to achieve it.
Showing up is important:
It is not always about perfection. I wrote whatever I could. But writing everyday is important.
Learn new things:
I felt the real need for learning new things. I ran short of the experiences which are on the top of my mind which I want to write. If you want to thrive in any industry learning new things is the only way.
Turn on creativity faucet:
On the days, I could not think of any topics, creativity came to my rescue. I wrote about the life lessons I learnt from FM Radio. I did not know that there is so much to learn from the surroundings until then. Creativity comes in when you look out with an open mind.
You will find resources when you really want to do it:
It is difficult to write and format in evernote. I was avoiding writing all these days because I thought editing can be done only when I am on laptop. But only when I was under pressure I realised that I can use google docs to write and edit. The laptop excuse which I gave previously will no longer hold true now.
What next?
Now that I know that writing everyday is tough but not impossible, I will write regularly.
Do you want to do a 30-day blogging challenge?
Step1: Select your Niche.
Step2: Select 60 topics in that niche.
Step3: Before the challenge, do a 30-day challenge of writing points for each topic.
Step 4: Start your challenge.
Step 5: Set time aside on your calendar everyday for this.
Happy writing!