Today Is the Last Day of My 30-Day Writing Challenge

Here’s how I did it!

Photo by Emma Bauso from Pexels

It began on 11 March, 2021 when I decided to devise this 30-day challenge for myself.

Whenever people advised me to start writing, I’d say, “I hate writing.”

My turning point came when one day I felt extremely frustrated about a certain topic and couldn’t get it out of my head even after talking about it for hours.

So, I decided to write about it as much as I could and surprisingly, that made me feel better.

I became curious to see if it was a one-time thing or I could actually love writing. That was the inspiration behind this 30-day challenge.

It feels surreal to finish this writing challenge. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it through But few things kept me going.

Apart from seeing how far my love for writing would last, I also wanted to test my ability to build a productive habit.

Before beginning this challenge, I did not prepare myself for the conventional writing presets. Instead, I followed my rules to make it to the end —

1. Write about anything. No niche.
2. Don’t worry about the grammar
3. Stay away from “what would people think”
4. Do not expect any outcome
5. Write for yourself, before anybody else
6. Steer clear of writing myths

These rules helped me complete this challenge.

I felt pumped during the initial days of this challenge. I wrote about topics that I wanted to write about for a year now. It seemed easy and I shared them with my friends to express my joy.

One week passed swiftly.

Now, I could think about new topics to write about, so I started extracting topics from everything in my vicinity. It was exciting to see how there’s an interesting topic lying in everything we see and hear.

15 days through and mid-term demotivation hit me. I started struggling to write about a topic that initially seemed interesting to me. I was having second thoughts about my decision to devising this challenge. I wanted to find a good enough reason to convince myself and quit this challenge.

But, there were two things that kept me going-

• My love for talking.

I have always enjoyed communicating with people and now I was doing that by penning down my thoughts. It’s bliss to be able to share your perspective on various topics without being interrupted.

• My stubborn nature

I don’t give up easily on things that I feel strongly about. I could not lose against building a productive habit.

Hence, I became choosier with my topics because they are the first way of increasing the motivation to write.

There were days when I published unfinished blogs, played with edit & save more than what was required.

But, slowly and steadily I won my race.

The other two things that gave me the final push, were-

• Reaffirming your motivation at every point
• To stop, right before quitting, even if you can’t see a reason enough.

I haven’t written the best pieces but the joy of triumph is ultimate.

However, I don’t think I would ever adopt writing full-time.

Writing is a very organic process for me. I could write for a month and then not write for the next two months straight. Choosing it as full-time work could lead me into forced writing and then I might go back to hating it.

So, now I say, I have a love-hate relationship with writing.

I love writing about things that I really want to share with the world and I hate writing when I have to do it for any other reason.

It might sound clichéd but if I could make it through with this writing challenge then anyone can.

P.S. Let me know if you liked any of my blogs, at himanshi651@gmail.com