SCBWI Daily Prompt Challenge

When You Accomplish What You Want To Do

What I learned from completing a 31-day challenge

In the early part of May, I noticed a few stories that were about a red door. It was the images that drew my attention. How often do you see a picture of a red door on several stories in one day? Fortunately, it was not the same picture.

I have ranted about how the same picture keeps showing up for different stories on Medium, urging writers to dig deeper on Unsplash, or use other sites to find images for their stories. I also shared a story by Remington Write that shows you how to use Google Images. An excellent resource, if you want to check it out, but I digress.

Then one day, a story about the Indian festival of the lights caught my eyes. Being from that part of the world, I was surprised to see that story because Diwali is celebrated in late October, not in early May. So I checked it out. That’s when I learned about the SCBWI prompts for the month of May. Saloni Joshi’s story about the festival of lights was in response to the prompt lantern.

That inspired me to write a story about lanterns, and my memories of growing up in India half a century ago. That story led to a brief conversation with the delightful Julia E Hubbel about the spelling of the word kerosine/kerosene, which led to this story and the ensuing fun response from her.

Some writers follow the money trail, I follow the fun trail. The next day’s prompt, balance, sparked more memories and another story. Which led to the memories of an escape of a lifetime.

By now, I was hooked. I wrote every day following the prompt for the day. Amy Marley would share stories from others who were writing along with us, and it kept us accountable. More writers joined, and some weren’t as regular, but wrote when a prompt intrigued them.

At the end of May, I decided that I will write the first seven prompts from the list retroactively, since I had started writing on May 8th. I had fun following the prompts to create stories, which weren’t always about the prompt itself, but were simply inspired by it.

Amy Marley has compiled a collection of all the stories written by herself and her friends during the 31 days challenge. She was also kind enough to include my retroactive stories in the compilation. You can read them all in the following post.

7 Lessons I Learned Along The Way

As I approached the end of the 31-day challenge, I decided I will sum up the lessons I learned by doing the challenge. The last time I completed a 30-day challenge was in Feb/Mar 2014. Unless you count my Walking Trip on Route 66, which took six months with a few breaks here and there.

Whenever you undertake a challenge, it is prudent to do an evaluation of the project. You can learn a lot by doing so; everything from what worked, what didn’t, and what else you could have included.

Here are the seven lessons I learned.

1. Have an accountability partner.

When you are working on a long-term project, it is good to have someone else who is also working on the same or similar project. It keeps you both motivated and accountable to each other.

According to an article on CNBC,

you can improve workplace habits with an accountability partner (or someone who commits to holding you responsible to reaching your goals).

Amy Marley said that having other people writing along kept her motivated, and I could say that it was more fun for me and it kept me going. Everyone finds motivation in a unique way. An accountability partner helps you by reminding you of your motivation.

2. A prompt will get your creative juices flowing.

A prompt can be anything. It could be a word, a phrase, a drawing, or a picture. Sometimes, a prompt will trigger a memory, which will get you started in a certain direction. You may end up using what you write as the final piece, or the jog down memory lane could be just the inspiration you need to start creating.

When I took the correspondence course in writing for children, they gave us a drawing to help us come up with a story.

I met a lady at the Woodland Writer’s Guild who had taken the same course and used the same drawing as a prompt. Her story and mine seemed like they were from different planets, even though they were both prompted from the same drawing.

If you need a prompt, there are 120 of them in this story by Keno Ogbo.

3. It is easier to succeed when you’re having fun.

As I mentioned earlier, I follow the fun trail. What got me going with this entire project was the initial experience of writing the story about the prompt lantern, and the ensuing conversation with Julia, and the resulting story about American and British spellings.

Many of the stories I wrote with these prompts resulted from a triggered memory. Not only that, I wrote several other stories outside the project that were inspired by my memories. Like this one about dreams.

As I write this, the song, The Way We Were, sung by Barbara Streisand, is playing in my head.

Memories may be beautiful, and yet, What’s too painful to remember We simply choose to forget.

Like I said, it’s easier to succeed when you’re having fun.

4. You don’t have to follow all the rules.

I have never been the one to follow all the rules. I see rules, especially in writing, as suggestions, and not as hard and fast recommendations to follow.

Prompts are there to inspire you and perk up your creative juices. A prompt doesn’t mean you have to write about the word or the phrase itself. When I saw the prompt into the wind, I immediately thought of Bob Seger’s song, Against the Wind.

So, I incorporated that and created a story around it and my rebellious nature of always going against the rules. As it turned out, it was the first prompt in my retroactive efforts, which was, in a sense, my way of bending the rules, and going against the wind while using into the wind as a prompt.

5. Writing daily polishes your work and brings out your writing voice.

While this was a concerted effort to follow a theme, if you want to call it that, I have been writing daily since the end of March. I think I only missed one day in April when I didn’t publish anything on Medium.

I have learned again and again, when I write regularly, and consistently, it improves my writing. When I look at the work I did in 2014, I wrote for 30 days and turned it into a book; I shake my head in disbelief at how I wrote.

Since I started writing on Medium at the end of October 2019, I have published over 200 stories in seven months, or roughly one story per day. When you write consistently for a long time, it is natural for your writing to evolve and improve. It is like anything else in life. Practise may not make it perfect, but it sure makes it better.

6. Storytelling is the best form of writing.

When I started blogging in 2009, my writing was more superficial. I was writing about what I didn’t know, but was trying to make an impression that I did, and it showed.

Over time, I learned the art of storytelling, thanks to my involvement in Toastmasters. I received instant feedback on my speeches and I became a master storyteller.

I used my storytelling skills to write 30 stories in a month to create a book, but my writing needed work and improvement. This project of writing for a month, using a prompt, allowed me to apply storytelling to everything. I also learned to combine storytelling with poetry, which requires you to be more concise and disciplined.

It has been fun. Did I mention that I follow a fun trail?

7. When you find joy in something, it’s easy to commit.

One of the primary reasons I stayed with the project was that I enjoyed reading other people’s work. I not only found joy in writing every day, I found pleasure in the company of those who were on the same path.

Amy was my biggest cheerleader, but I also found support from Saloni Joshi, Indra Raj Pathak, and Bob Jasper. Reading their stories gave me the kick in the pants I needed some days, and eventually the motivation to complete the entire project retroactively.

I can honestly say that this is the first time I completed a project not from a sense of obligation, but from a feeling of joy. Thank you, Amy, Bob, Saloni, and Indra for being there on the journey with me.

A bonus lesson I learned.

I had lots of fun writing these 31 stories over 31 days. The most important benefit I received was the gift of consistency and discipline. I learned to write on schedule, and I learned to write on assignment. I learned to honor deadlines.

I have always been someone who did everything on his own terms and resisted any kind of structure or time table. I knew instinctively that being disciplined is a necessity on the path of success, but my independent nature always got in the way.

Writing for 31 days using 31 prompts taught me that being disciplined doesn’t mean you have to give up freedom; it means you simply have to find a way to make it fun.

Writing on assignment doesn’t mean losing independence, it means searching for common grounds. Schedules and deadlines don’t mean giving up control; they mean honoring your commitment and keeping your word to yourself, and to others. It means living with integrity.

The bottom line.

Looking back over the past 31 days, I can say that I accomplished something substantial and meaningful while having fun and growing as a writer in the process.

I also found writers whose work I enjoy, and followers who enjoy my work. I learned to write in different genres and discovered unfamiliar forms of poetry, such as Haiku and Tanka.

All in all, it was a delightful experience that I would be happy to repeat when the opportunity presents itself.

Have you ever taken part in any kind of writing challenge? Nanowrimo, A to Z blogging challenge, or some other challenge that required you to make a long-term commitment. What was your experience? I would love to know.

Holly Jahangiri, Timothy Key, P.G. Barnett, Sherry McGuinn, Kathryn A. LeRoy, Ph.D. Tree Langdon ♾️, Kevin Buddaeus, Salam Khan, Terry Mansfield,

As always, thank you for reading and responding.

More about me:

Rasheed Hooda is a published author and a regular contributor to ILLUMINATION, a writers’ community on Medium where writers support each other.

He is a self-proclaimed weirdo who lives a Freedom Lifestyle and writes about related topics — Travel (a top writer), Personal Growth, Freedom, and entrepreneurship. (Get the Newsletter)

“You can let others tell you what it means to be successful, or you can decide it for yourself.”