A Writing Challenge & A Giveaway!
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Instead of a guest blogger today, us Plotmonkeys are issuing all you writers out there who visit our blog to a “70 Days of Sweat” challenge. All four of us have joined this challenge, and we’d love to have company! What is the “70 Days of Sweat” challenge? Well, if you’ve never heard of it before, I’ll post the general description and rules of the challange here for you:
On July 6th, 2007, writing friends Alison Kent, Jo Leigh, HelenKay Dimon, Stephanie Tyler and Larissa Ione launched the Seventy Days of Sweat Writing Challenge. The point of the challenge was to rid their writing lives of the solitude of laboring alone and share the pain and agony with as many other writers as they could. Two-hundred seventy like-minded fools authors signed up, taking on the challenge to write between 60K and 100K words in the allotted seventy days.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of the National Novel Writing Month where the goal of the participants is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. You’ve probably also heard of the Book-in-a-Week first draft blast, and may have heard of the Book in a Year challenge at eHarlequin, or simply the One Page A Day method to getting a book written in 365. How ’bout a book in seventy days? Doable? You betcha.
Say you’re writing a 100,000 word single title. 70 days at 1500 words per day (approx 6 pages) is 98,000 words total. Say you’re writing a 60,000 word series romance. 70 days at 900 words per day (approx 4 pages) is 63,000 words total. Writing 4 - 6 pages every day for 70 days is a schedule anyone who calls themselves a pro can handle easily!
The rules are simple. You agree to write 4 - 6 pages a day (depending on the length of your book) every day between the dates listed above. If you need to take off a day, you make up the pages another. If you don’t like to write 7 days a week, too bad. This challenge lasts for only 10 weeks, and if you have to get up early on the weekends to get the pages done, you do it. (Hey, we all do it! You can, too!)
You don’t have to have a blog to participate, but we do want you to sign up so everyone involved can get to know one another. And if you do have a blog, you can post the information there. Going public with your commitment is about owning it. As far as reporting your progress, you’ll return to the 70 Days of Sweat Blog each Wednesday and Sunday and post your total word count.
70 Days of Sweat Round 3 will start on March 1. Basically, 70 Days of Sweat is designed to challenge (naturally), support, and encourage those of us crazy enough to write a book in 70 days. At the end, we’re looking for a word count between 60-100K. We’ve built an extra week into this round, so technically you have 77 days to sweat meaning . . . Round 3 will run from March 1 to May 16.
Okay, so technically we’re a week behind in inviting you to the challenge, but it’s all about writing those pages each and every day — no matter when you might start the the challenge. So, who’s not afraid to sweat? Join the Plotmonkeys in their 70 Days of Sweat challenge!
A SURPRISE SATURDAY CONTEST! 
Since today is technically our “writing day”, and we always try to do something writing related, I’m giving away my copy of GOAL, MOTIVATION & CONFLICT by Debra Dixon. Since I’m moving in the next few months, I’m cleaning out all my books, including a lot of my writing reference books. This is a MUST HAVE book when it comes to building/creating strong characters. (It’s a concept us Plotmonkeys use to plot out every one of our books, thanks to Julie who taught us how important GMC is to writing a book!) Learn to use these critical fiction-writing elements to give dimension to your characters and direction to your plot. Plan a road map to keep your story on track. Discover why your scenes aren’t working and what to do about it. Since this book is coming off my own personal shelf, it does have some yellow high-lighting in sections, so I do apologize for that — but other than that, it’s in perfect condition and I’d love to pass it on to someone who doesn’t already have this book.
All you have to do to be eligible to win GOAL, MOTIVATION & CONFLICT is post a message below. Let us know if you’re joining the 70 Days of Sweat challenge, and why you feel you should win this book! Check back tomorrow (Sunday) to see if you’re the winner!
