Weekly Writing Challenge: Just Do It!

For some of us, blogging is personal. Others are trying to educate or entertain; many more are hybrids. Yet we’re all storytellers. Writing Challenges help you to push your writing boundaries, show off your blogging chops, and, hopefully, spark more post ideas.

To participate, tag your post with DPchallenge or leave a link to it in the comments. (It would also be great if you could link to this post to encourage people to take part – the more the merrier!)  Your post should be specifically written in response to this challenge. We’ll keep an eye on the tag and highlight some of our favorite posts on Freshly Pressed on Friday.
___________________________________________________

You’ve got your WordPress.com site and have been lurking here at The Daily Post reading articles, considering the writing and photo challenges. Maybe you’ve been thinking about responding to a Daily Prompt, though perhaps you haven’t been able to fully commit to posting on your site. Reasons to procrastinate proliferate like fruit flies in that pop can you left out on the counter overnight. “I’m too tired!” “I have nothing to say!” and the penultimate excuse, “I have no time!” Well, since we’ve all survived the Mayan Apocalypse, we’ve all got time, and now you can devote some of that time to blogging each day for a whole week. Let’s talk about how.

Jack Cheng is a writer, designer, and entrepreneur from Brooklyn, New York. In his post, 30 Minutes a Day, Jack contends that when trying to learn a new skill, it’s frequency over quantity that matters most:

When trying to develop a new skill, the important thing isn’t how much you do; it’s how often you do it.

Jack advocates building a daily practice. He relates a story about Jerry Seinfeld, and the simple method Jerry uses to avoid procrastination and spend time each day, working on his craft — writing jokes:

When software developer Brad Isaac asked Jerry Seinfeld, who in those days was still a touring comic, what his secret was, he advised Isaac to pick up one of those wall calendars that had the entire year on a single page. To Seinfeld, becoming a better comedian meant writing every day, so each day Jerry worked on his writing, he would put a big red X in the box for that day. Pretty soon, there’d be a chain of red Xs and not breaking the chain became its own motivation.

You might be writing jokes on your blog, or it could be poems, personal reflections, short stories, memoirs, and / or posting photos. Jack suggests that you can achieve any goal you choose if you can devote just 30 minutes a day to it. Is 30 minutes too long, what with child, work, and family commitments? Start with 15 minutes, or even ten minutes. With the new year upon us in a week, now’s the time to resolve to work on your blog and then actually do it!

Your challenge: post every day for a full week. We’re excited to see what you’ll post about — be sure to tag your post DPchallenge so that we can follow your progress. Feeling extra saucy? Write about your experiences overcoming procrastination. The tip or trick that inspired you to consistency might be just the thing to spur a fellow blogger to blow the dust off their blog and get to work.