Summer Writing Challenge: The 100 for 100 is back!

Stephanie Morrill is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com and the author of several young adult novels, including the historical mystery, The Lost Girl of Astor Street, which releases in February 2017. Despite loving cloche hats and drop-waist dresses, Stephanie would have been a terrible flapper because she can’t do the Charleston and looks awful with bobbed hair. She and her near-constant ponytail live in Kansas City with her husband and three kids. You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website.

Of all the events we've done on Go Teen Writers, none has been quite as popular as the 100 for 100 challenge.

If you haven't played along before, the challenge is to write (at least) 100 words a day, every day, for 100 days.

100 words is about a paragraph. You can likely do it in 10 minutes or less. Already, this post is 64 words long. So while it might seem like just a drop in the bucket, all those drops add up to 10.000 words in your manuscript by the end of the 100 days. And that's if you do the bare minimum! Not bad, right?

This writing challenge is open to writers of all ages! Here's how the challenge works:

1. You sign up on the form below saying, "Yes, I want to write 100 words for the next 100 days." You must be signed up by the end of June 1st if you want to play along. If you live in a place where our June 1st is your June 2nd, do whatever feels easiest for you. Either start on June 1st in your time zone or in ours.

2. Beginning on Wednesday, June 1st you write 100 words on the project of your choice. You must pick one project to work on for the 100-for-100 challenge. Only words for that that project count towards your daily words. Here are the exceptions:

• If you finish your project. Hooray for finishing projects! If this happens, tell us so we can celebrate, and then pick something else to work on.
• If you and your project part ways. This happened to me one year. The 100-for-100 coincided with a writers conference, and I pitched my 100-for-100 book to an editor at the conference. She told me they already had a book in the pipeline that was basically the same concept. And that was probably the last time I ever opened that manuscript file...

3. You write 100 words a day everyday until September 8th, and you keep track of it. At the end of the challenge, you'll send me your tracking sheet. Here's a link to one we've made, but you don't have to use this one. (This link will give you access to view it but not make changes. You can hopefully print it out or download it. If you're having trouble with it, let me know.) Somehow, though, you need to keep track of how many words you've written so that I can see. A few notes about your words:

• You are allowed one "grace day" per week (sometimes life happens, plus many people take a day off a week for religious reasons and we want to respect that), and one "grace week" per contest. So if one week you only write 300 words, you just count up what you have, and press on.
• You can write more than 100 words each day if you like. Most people find they do. But you can't write 700 words on Monday and nothing the rest of the week and still participate in the challenge. The idea is to develop a writing discipline. So some days you might write 1,000 words and others you might barely get in your 100.

4. When the challenge is over, you send me your form. Then three things happen:

• You get my admiration and respect. I have actually never made it all the way to the end. I'm hoping this is my moment!
• You get entered for prizes! Books and gift cards and critiques all sorts of fun writerly things that you'll like.
• We post your name on a list on the website as someone who totally rocks. We also do fun competitions between the age groups to see who was the most productive. It's a lot of fun!

Some helpful tips:

Lydia Howe is a 100-for-100 challenge success story and she was wonderful enough to write a post several years about how she developed the discipline to write every day.

If you're looking for a community to do this with, the Go Teen Writers Community Facebook group is a fabulous place. Elizabeth Liberty Lewis, Lily Jenness, and Bethany Baldwin have been our moderators for almost a year now, and they do a lovely job. They're very careful about who has access to the group, so if you want to join, give them a head's up: GoTeenWritersCommunity(at)gmail.com.

We're planning several word wars on the blog this summer. The tentative dates are June 13th-June 17th and August 8th-12th. That can be a great chance to rack up words and make friends!

Have questions? Leave them in the comments below, and I'll get them answered!