200 Words a Day Challenge

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen me tweet with the hashtag #200wordsaday. This comes from The Bestseller Experiment’s 200 Words a Day Challenge.

The basic premise is this: the best way to learn to write is to write consistently. Consistency builds habits, making what can feel like a chore—such as forcing yourself to sit in front of a screen and poke at a keyboard on a nice day—more like an everyday routine. So, if you’re struggling to build a writing habit, set a smaller writing goal that takes less time to complete, such as 200 words a day—which typically takes around 10–20 minutes, give or take, depending on your draft.

What a lot of people see from setting this goal is that they often surpass it; they unexpectedly end up sinking their teeth deeper into what they’re writing, and they become oblivious to opening their jaws and letting go. And on days when they do the bare minimum 200 words, they still feel good, because the challenge helped them with one of the most important parts of writing. It got them closer to finishing.

Back to the hashtag. Part of the 200 Words a Day Challenge is using the official website to document how much you write each day. This helps you stay accountable. Once you add your word count—I set a daily reminder—the Challenge recommends you tweet how much you wrote. This celebrates the work you did, encourages others to do the same, and it promotes the challenge to other writers—a hat-trick of benefits.

You can learn more on their site, or by listening to the Bestseller Experiment’s podcast, where they regularly mention the wins writers had from the challenge.

Happy writing.