Congratulations! You’ve survived the June writing challenge. Regardless of whether you hit the 60k or not, you put words down. You grew your story.

On this end, I’m considering it a win. With this being the first large scale challenge I wanted to take this as an opportunity to learn what it would take to run a larger challenge. With that in mind, some notes.

The Good

I did hit 60k! First and foremost I feel like that’s the biggest win for me. The last couple of years I was fairly lax about tracking my word counts. Additionally, because of a new day job my ability to write daily took a hit. I didn’t end up writing every day, and most certainly didn’t hit target several days in a row.

About week two I hit a rough spot that required a lot more backend writing that didn’t end up counting towards my goal. Once I’d gotten through that, I picked up the flow almost immediately.

I also learned how to flex my writing process a little better, which makes it easier to write even when I don’t have much free space.

The Not-So-Good

Sprints

Running live sprints turned out to be a lot more than I’d accounted for. While talking and posting was a ton of fun, it also meant I spent minutes out of every sprint not writing, and instead double-checking posts and responding to replies and comments. Ultimately the last two days of sprints I set the schedule and had to walk away, rather than trying to keep-up and reply.

That’s not how I want to have to run them, so for next time I’m exploring other possibilities and options. The goal is to be able to encourage everyone to write.

Overload

This isn’t entirely challenge-related, but definitely had a contributing factor to it.

I overloaded myself.

On top of hitting 60k on a draft, I’d also planned on writing and posting a short story weekly, and started a serial release over on my Substack. Neither the shorts nor the serial release were counted in my word count for the month, but they absolutely added to the workload. I ended up posting only one short story, and three chapters of the serial.

There were also local events for Pride, plus my own anniversary. Writing had to take a sideline a few more days than I’d planned.

This isn’t a terrible thing. It’s a good reminder that I’m not going to be able to do everything and that it’s okay if I have to let go of somethings.

For Next Time

Yes, there will absolutely be another 30 Days to 60k. This won’t be for a while, but I’m already excited to run the next one.

July will be back to regular posting with a couple of slight adjustments. You can now get a weekend flash challenge every weekend! I’m also playing with when posts go out, so the rest of the month may be a little erratic for when posts the rest of the week go out.

Happy writing!