Weekly Writing Challenge: Characters

For some of us, blogging is personal. Others are trying to educate or entertain; many more are hybrids. Yet we’re all storytellers. Creative 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.

A Year in Posting

As the year comes to a close, it’s hard to not take a look back at what we’ve accomplished, individually and collectively, in the past twelve months. The internet and online communities are a constantly changing source of inspiration: Occupy Wall Street caused a 217% increase in mobile sharing; GigaOM recently published an article on how eReaders and self-publishing are changing the landscape of journalism; and WordPress even covered some of the top news stories that were written up by the amazing bloggers on WordPress.com.

As the writing, social media, and blogging landscape changes, I’m sure your methods and goals for blogging have changed as well. The Daily Post started with the idea of helping bloggers to post daily or weekly and get past any hurdles that may prevent you from hitting “Publish.”

When you do something once a day, or once a week, your skills improve dramatically. I recently came across this Kickstarter project from a fellow who started making an illustration a day and is now on his 1000th drawing. What new skills have you developed as a Daily Post participant?

Next year, inviting contributors to post on your blog or conducting an interview with a fellow blogger, local entrepreneur, or even a friend with a neat project is a great way to bring new audiences to your blog. You may also consider publishing some of your blog posts as a book. (Don’t forget, you’re in great company!) There’s lots of new themes available in our Theme Showcase, how about a fresh look for you blog to get you excited for the new year?

Another fun way to take a look at your growth this year is to post a recap. There are plenty of articles on the end of the year blog posts. Some of my favorites are writing about your best posts of 2011, which posts you feel didn’t get enough appreciation, and what you learned in the past year.

I’d love to hear in the comments what might have prevented you from blogging as often as you could have or any tips you’re looking forward to learning for next year. That’s what we’re here to help with!