After I found  Blogchatter, I wanted to explore different activities on this platform which  I felt was the best way to connect with fellow bloggers. I came across the  #WriteAPageADay Challenge which could be anything from essays to poems to even something as simple as a daily journal. 

Here, I’m going to talk about 5 ways I learnt to maximize my writing potential.

We all need motivation 

This was not a writing challenge that I had ever participated in. I have participated in many writing challenges in the past and have been a part of different blogging communities in India. Challenges help me to test my writing potential and consistency. In one of the social media posts of Blogchatter, I read that the target was to surpass 10k words in February and the number 10k caught my attention. This number looked so scary and bulky to me at first that I wanted to test my writing ability in terms of word limit. I was excited about the outcome of this challenge.

The right approach helps to accomplish goals

I saw this challenge as an opportunity to finish editing the abandoned drafts and publish them as blog posts regularly which I always wanted to do. My joy knew no bounds when my first article on the prompt of BlogchatterBlogHop received the badge of Top Blog. 

I composed two poems, journaled actively during this phase and didn’t miss reviewing books I read or movies I watched. I didn’t get to select prompts from the calendar prepared by the Blogchatter Team but I will revisit those prompts in the future whenever I face Writer’s Block.  

For longer blog posts, I prepared an outline, wrote headings/subheadings, and then started writing the ideas in bullet points under each subheading. Whenever any new idea struck my mind, I wrote it under the appropriate sub-heading. In this way, I gave 2-3 days to complete the longer blog posts to my satisfaction.  

I counted every single word that I wrote and could write a total of 16161 in 28 days and an average of 577 words per day. This result shocked me and made me aware of my writing potential!

Overcoming writing blocks 

“The hardest part of any important task is getting started on it in the first place. Once you begin work on a valuable task, you seem to be naturally motivated to continue.” ― Brian Tracy, Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in  Less Time 

I learned a lot from this challenge like prioritizing tasks, time, and resource management. Out  of many learning from this challenge, I would like to list out the major ones as follows: 

1) This challenge helped me to accomplish more in less time by overcoming procrastination.  When you set a deadline to finish something and commit to it, there’s a high chance of you completing it. 

2) I declared my participation in the #WriteAPageADay Challenge on my Twitter profile.  Declaring your goal in public makes you more committed to the goal as you would like to share the result at the end of it.  

3) This challenge made me more mindful of my writing habit. Even though I was writing every day in some form or the other, the concrete result in form of the figure made me very satisfied. 

The importance of community support  

As the rule of the challenge, I chose Twitter to post my daily word count and aggregate word count so far. I used their template to do so. I never forgot to use the hashtag #WriteAPageADay and tag Team members of BlogChatter. It was great to connect with other participants of the contests and check their progress. It was motivating for me on those days when I couldn’t achieve the target but I pushed myself anyhow.

Rewards keep the writing practice alive

Rewards are like catalysts pushing one close to his goal. Rewards need not be always in the form of physical gifts but can be simple as shout-outs, mentions/features on socials, etc. I  appreciate Blogchatter’s way of motivating and acknowledging participants’ efforts by lending stickers after completing 3 days,5 days, and 10 days of this challenge and at the end a sticker showing successful completion of #WriteAPageADay Challenge. I also received 300 Reward points for completing this challenge which can be redeemed as a withdrawal of Rs.300 from my bank account linked to my Blogchatter profile. In addition to all these, I received a mail from the Team of Blogchatter to send a gift for completing this challenge. I am so excited about receiving my first swag/gift from Blogchatter I also received a beautiful gift delivered to my doorstep.  

Challenges increase your writing potential

Although the #WriteAPageADay Challenge was restricted to February 2023, it helped me to be more disciplined towards my writing habit by reducing procrastination. It is said that building a habit requires 21 days and that is what this challenge has helped me to build. The sense of achievement that I had every day in Feb 2023 after being able to write a page at the end of the day, is something that I don’t want to lose. So, I’ve continued writing a  page a day for this month also. I am a strong believer in maintaining healthy habits and writing is one of those. It is a simple way to express yourself without being judged and bringing your mental clutter into paper. I am now more comfortable completing my writing assignments rather than putting them off, for later. 

Proper planning helps you organize your tasks

“But as long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It  has endless potential.” ― Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever 

Every challenge is difficult in the beginning, if it weren’t, everyone would do it. Many start the challenge and only a few make it to the finish line. Challenges provide us with a way to unlock our hidden potential. As an advocate of building habits over chasing goals, I realised my consistency in writing potential through this challenge. Now, 10k words don’t appear as something unachievable to me anymore because I have achieved that. In the end, I would like to thank the Team of Blogchatter to come up with the noble idea of motivating bloggers to add feathers to their writing quill by writing and achieving more. Last but not the least,  congratulations to all participants who completed it, and shout out to those who participated in it.