30-day writing challenges?
Now that March is almost here, it's time to think about my 30-day writing challenges because April is coming up fast. Back in November of 2023, I managed to crank out 30 short stories in 30 days. (Okay, it was actually 28 stories, and then the 29th on December 1st, and now I'm still finishing up the last one, but it's a happy tear-jerker, don't judge, those are really hard to write.)
Point is, the 30-day thing really got my creative juices flowing, my test readers loved them, and I think I could pump out a lot of excellent work if I only let myself write fiction... *whispers, "thirty days hath September, April, June, and November..."* FOUR TIMES A YEAR.
(I'm also in grad school, so I write a lot anyway, but not on these topics, obvs.)
But, of course, I also want people to read my work, and it'd be nice to be able to afford food on occasion.
I know there aren't a lot of you out there right now reading this, but what's your input? Does anyone else (good) do challenges like this? Is it worth it to share the stories as I go along, knowing they'll be disqualified from traditional publishing? Should I just go with "fuck traditional publishing" anyway?
FYI, the November 2023 story was a cycle of short stories about cryptids in daily life, but they're kind of a palidrome cycle: the first fifteen introduce characters, and sixteen through thirty resolve those stories in reverse order (#15 gets resolved in #16, #14 gets resolved in #17, and so forth). Does anyone wanna read those? What are your favorite platforms for reading short stories and supporting your favorite authors?
