I Will Write and Publish 30 Pieces for 30 Days

That’s right. Starting tomorrow, I will write and publish something every day for 30 days.

Why? I have grown dissatisfied with my creative output. I spent all of 2022 just working on my science fiction novel Eris Equation and some scattered short stories. It was fun but I know I can do more. I used to be able to consistently win NaNoWriMo, sometimes writing two to three novel drafts in the 50-60.000 word range per year. Not all of them were good but the fact remains that my output has decreased by a lot over the last few years. And if I am honest with myself, the problem isn‘t time or physical ability. It‘s grit.

Then I found Nicolas Cole and his impressive journey of writing online. He started out by writing one Quora answer every day for one year, making each and every piece as engaging and interesting as he could. I certainly don‘t plan on following every single step of his personal journey but his key message of consistent output stuck with me.

"Ship 30 for 30" is his course where participants write and publish a piece of writing every day for 30 days. This course will serve as blueprint for my personal challenge: writing and publishing 30 pieces between January 30 and February 28, 2023.

The specifics

Every day, I will write

• one Quora answer to be published on Quora (obviously) in English and/or

• one piece of short fiction to be published on this Substack and Medium (possibly Wattpad?), alternating between English and German

But why?

Apart from forcing consistent output, some of the reasons why I chose this particular challenge are

• finding out what sort of nonfiction I might enjoy writing

• fleshing out some side characters and places from my novel Eris Equation that I've been dying to have fun with

• playing with some other story ideas

• practicing writing fiction in English which I haven't done since my play-by-post forum RPG days

• getting used to writing in public which seems frightening but also fun and potentially very rewarding

I hope this announcement will help me stick with it over the course of the next month. Feel free to join if you want to boost your output as well! I will use the original hashtag #Ship30for30 on social media and would love some mutual encouragement.