The Conscious Me Pre-Writing Challenge

I’ve mentioned Carlos more than once over the course of this blog, most notably in a recent post about getting your writing done early, when I also mentioned the Conscious Me Pre-Writing Challenge. As I said in that post:

My friend Carlos is working on a personal development blog that he started around the same time as Unstressed Syllables. Last week he wrote a guest post on some of the same principles in this article, and in the excited discussion that followed, he proposed a plan for a big pre-writing challenge. His goal is to get two full weeks’ worth of posts stockpiled, and he’s determined to get all the bloggers he knows to participate. It’s an ambitious goal, with a big group dedicated to support and advice and accountability — really, in a lot of ways, it’s like National Novel Writing Month, and you know I’ve got nothing but good things to say about that program.

So I’m in. If you’re a blogger (and, if you’ve been around for more than a week, you should be), consider joining in. You can find Carlos’s description of the event here, and watch this page for updates on how I’m doing.

Challenge Details

The challenge is to spend a month, from February 19 to March 21, preparing two weeks’ worth of extra material. For most of the participants, I think that’s going to mean building up some timeless posts that can be used as fillers during crunch times, but I work best (as I’ve mentioned before) moving from start to finish. So my goal as of March 21 is to have the next eight posts (four articles and four writing exercises) all finished up.

That means, before I even get started, I’ll have to write everything that comes between now and then. I’ve made a good start, slamming through the next four weeks of writing exercises, but once those are all done I’ll have to settle in for the tough work. It won’t be easy, but as I said on Tuesday, it should be immensely rewarding.

I’m announcing this in a big way, because I think that accountability will go a long way toward making me follow through. If you want to watch my progress, sign up for my RSS feed if you haven’t already (or check out any of my other subscription methods).

The Posts I’ll Be Working On

As I said, I’m planning to work on this chronologically, so I had to figure out what I want to talk about four days a week for the next six weeks. I did that last night, and what initially seemed like a tedious task became a game pretty quickly. Not only that, it gave me a chance to focus on some of the principles I’m always talking about — things like deliberate structure, and careful, logical organization.

I think the result for my regular readers will be higher-quality material, since I’m not just throwing together a post at a time, but building a planned and powerful framework. If you want to get an idea of where I’m going, these are some of the topics I’ll be talking about during the challenge.

Writing Exercises
- Memoirs of a Procrastinator
- Inquisition Exposition
- Interesting Things
- Character Record Sheet
- Describe Your Reader
- An Undercover Agent in the Gender Wars
- Everyone’s a Critic
- Write a Sonnet
Articles
- Finding a Topic
- Reader Response Questions
- Audience Analysis
- RPGs and Character Profiles
- Accurate Descriptions
- Boys and Girls
- The Point of Punctuation
- Loving Language (The Purpose of Poetry)

And these are the eight posts I’m going to put together for the challenge itself.

Strip Poem (Technical Writing Exercise)

Description: Hmm, this exercise isn’t quite as naughty as it sounds. We spent last week talking about poetry and punctuation, though, and I thought this would be a lot of fun. My tech writers don’t have to try their hand at writing sonnets. Instead, I want them to practice recognizing the impact of punctuation (and whitespace, and document design). Find a suitable document, strip out the formatting and punctuation (or rearrange it to fit your needs), and make a poem out of something entirely prosaic. Express your creativity, without writing a word.