Writing Challenge Compilation

Three Weeks of Challenges Down!

A compilation of my responses to date in July

In July I have committed to responding to a writing challenge each and every day. I have made it through three weeks and twenty-three responses so far. Only eight to go!

To support my efforts, and hopefully engage some other folks in taking a stab at one or more of the challenges, I am also putting out a daily bulletin with the list of challenges, a handy Medium tip, plus I welcome one of the groups of new writers added to the ILLUMINATION Publication.

Check my bulletin each day for new challenges that come up. It is a great way to ward off writer’s block and get to know other writers by interacting and responding!

And, because there are so many daily bulletins, I compiled them all in one story that I update daily. It is a great way to find past daily bulletins. Check that out here:

As a way to keep things tidy, and provide convenient access to the challenges, I am doing a weekly roundup of the challenges I took on along with my responses. Read on to see just what happened in week three; and then two and one.

Week Three

This one is in response to an idea generated by Desiree Driesenaar which has some (at least partial) origin with Holly Jahangiri. It is to create an Abecedarian poem. I think the topic is open, although Desiree chose to use life perspective.

Dr Mehmet Yildiz asks us to write on a topic, and proposes: “Jealousy”:

Charles Roast asks you to write about a very special tree. He chose a poem format, but allows that we can create in any format we wish:

B. A. Cumberlidge. asks new writers to make some observations on what could be better about Illumination. The idea is to make positive suggestions rather than poke holes.

Geetika Sethi tagged me in a prompt originating with Brett Christensen. It is to write a Haiku or Tanka with the prompt dry:

Holly Jahangiri and Rasheed Hooda offered this challenge to, “Highlight the work of four different Medium writers with stories they have posted on Medium that do not all appear in a single publication.”

Week Two

First off I took on Desiree Driesenaar‘s challenge to describe what verb we would be: This was a great contemplative exercise to start off the second week, and I responded like this:

Next Sherry McGuinn tells us about the hole in her pants, and asks us if we are feeling the same way? This was also a good exercise in self-reflection, and I found that the place where my motivation was leaking out was located in my shoe:

Then, Infiniti suggested this great prompt: Something Weird Happened… I actually hadn’t read her response to her own prompt before I wrote mine, interestingly they turned out to be in a similar vein — great minds think alike!

Next, Rasheed Hooda challenged us to describe ourselves in an acronym of the first letters of our name. This one actually went better than I expected. See, I am not much of an acronym aficionado. But older dogs can do some tricks and I managed to pull off something worthwhile here:

There were a lot of weighty topics in this week’s challenges, and this on from B. A. Cumberlidge. that asks when we can start tackling the important issues of our day, certainly was one of those. I think I did Brian’s challenge a solid and tried to supply a reasonable answer to a very thoughtful and timely question:

Next, Zach J. Watson to create a testimonial for another writer, but in the spirit of election season, do it in a campaign ad format. I thought this one was a lot of fun, and a brilliant idea by Zach. Super cool, I hope many people participate and pass this one on!

And then to close out the second week of a month’s worth of challenges I dove into this poem challenge from Holly Jahangiri in response to an ongoing poem chain that originated here with Martin Rushton. Check out Holly’s reply to Martin’s prompt. And then my reply to hers:

Week One

It seemed appropriate to kick things off by addressing a couple of recent challenges by Dr Mehmet Yildiz. First he challenged us to highlight five of our best articles, which had a strong response and he compiled all of the results here. I was a little late to the game, but here is my response:

Then Dr Mehmet Yildiz challenged each of us to review another writer’s list of “best of” stories. I chose to highlight Daniella Mini‘s great writing:

Next I took on Tree Langdon ♾️‘s challenge to create new words that should be in the dictionary. This was a lot of fun:

B. A. Cumberlidge. had a couple of challenges for us as well, first asking: we would invite to dinner. I had to think about this one a bit, but then struck upon just the right response:

Then Brian got even deeper, and what is your true meaning of life? I didn’t think I would get this philosophical in a writing challenge, but, well, I did.

Then is a serendipitous and muse-like conversation in a completely unrelated story comment section, Holly Jahangiri wondered about the various ways people interpret the significance of the number 13.

And then to close out the first week of the challenge I took Rasheed Hooda‘s challenge that asks us, “What do you see in the world around you?”:

Almost there!

Three weeks down, one to go! If you haven’t taken on a writing challenge, it is a fun way to engage with others. Plus, it pushes you to use your imagination a little bit, and also conform your writing to a slightly different style. All good practice, and fairly entertaining. Pick one a give it a try!

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.