Many great authors both past and present cite routine as crucial to their writing success. That’s why back in March, when we first went on lockdown and routines across the world were thrown into disarray, we created the Writing Streak Challenge as a way to provide the WtW community with a daily activity to help ground their writing practice. Over the course of the challenge, Samina Parveen (India) and Ruth Foote (Australia) accomplished the incredible feat of responding to our challenge prompts every weekday for fourteen weeks—that’s seventy days of writing each!
Read on to find out what their experiences were like and which works they were most proud of over the course of the challenge.
Watch out for a new weekly challenge to start on Monday!
Samina Parveen
What is your favorite thing about the writing challenges? What have you found most difficult?
Samina: My favorite thing is the assorted and fresh topics brought up every week. It makes me get out of my comfort zone and try new prompts. The commitment is a challenge.
Ruth: I love the challenge of having to respond to the same prompt five different times! It’s cool, and a helpful skill to be able to look at something through different eyes. The hard thing is I can start to run out of ideas, so I really have to think to write the last few pieces. But that’s not a bad thing; having to think about your writing more makes it an even more enjoyable piece to read, because more work and thought has been put into it.
What made you decide to commit to completing the writing challenge series?
Samina: My mother always encouraged me to complete any work I commence. Also, lockdown made our routine upside down, so streaks were a good opportunity to polish my writing skills and maintain a proper routine.
Ruth: Hmm, several reasons. One, is I just really love writing! It’s really enjoyable to be able to put thoughts down on paper (well, computer I suppose), and to have other people read and critique it. Another is, it’s a fun challenge! I like challenges, and things like the Writing Streak really help give me motivation to write every day!
Ruth Foote
Which weekly prompt was your favorite to respond to?
Samina: My favorite was Numerous Narrators. It took a lot of research and thinking to respond to that prompt. I loved the concept of multiple POVs and I loved working on it. I also liked Five-Stanza Poem. It encouraged me to write better poetry.
Ruth: Ooh, that’s a hard question; they were all so amazing! I think one of my favourites was Ten Second Essays. I really enjoyed that one, because you were able to encase a small snippet of wisdom (well, maybe not wisdom, but something like that) in a sentence (definitely way easier than writing a proper essay!) But honourable mentions would be Headlines from Home, Six-Word Memoir, and Numerous Narrators!
Which response (either a single day or a completed week) are you particularly proud of? Why?
Samina: I am proud of my piece written for the prompt Daily Flash, titled New generation cinderella (W9D2) and my piece responding to Heart tweets, Night on terrace (W7D1),
Ruth: Again, a hard question! I’d say all my responses to Week 8, Ten Second Essays! Though it was very fun to write the Headlines From Home for Week 1.
