East Bay Bookshelf

It’s Day 30 of my 30 Days of Writing project and I’m so excited to share what went well (and what didn’t) over the past month.

How it started:

We didn’t have plans over Labor Day Weekend this year, so of course I decided it was a good time to create a project for myself during what would become one of the busiest months of the year for me!

What worked well:

• I created a very loose content schedule each week, including the Tuesday TBR, Beyond the Bookshelf, and the 5 on a Friday newsletter.
• I tried to draft posts a week in advance and put the finishing touches on the day before posting.
• I had to write down ideas immediately before I lost them forever. Yes, even the bad ideas that were never published.
• I collaborated with a debut author! This was so fun and I can’t wait to do this again in the future!
• I have two years of blog posts in the archives, so I went back through that material, updated it, went deeper, and shared some of those posts again.
• I didn’t follow a specified word count. My goal was to write and hit “publish” each day.
• I remembered the “habit loop.” I decided that I wasn’t going to scroll Instagram until my blog post was up each day. This worked really well for me!

What didn’t work well:

I hate to admit this, but over the last 30 days my writing goals kind of got in the way of my reading goals. For instance, I showed up to book club and had not even finished the book yet! Writing comes so naturally to me, so I may have to introduce a required reading time before I begin writing.

What’s next:

I find that 30 days is really the perfect amount of time to understand if a change is sustainable in my life. If I make it to 30 days that’s usually evidence enough for me that I can do it!

I am going to continue writing and publishing every day. I may miss a day here and there, but I can pick it back up again. I don’t seem to run out of material to write about when it comes to my reading life!

I am thinking of a new 30 day creative challenge now that doesn’t require much more effort, but will definitely push me out of my comfort zone. I can’t wait to share more with you!

Have you ever completed a 30 day challenge?