I did it! I wrote 30 pieces of short stories, poetry and flash fiction in the month of September and I leaned a great deal about myself and my writing during the process. And I know this post might be a little late since it’s already the 5th of October, but I have my reasons for that.

The challenge itself was a spur of the moment idea. I was really getting into writing in August and randomly thought “Hell, why not push myself to write every day in September!” and immediately got to work collecting prompts I could use. Looking at my track record in August, I was confident that I could make it work. And I did.

But what did I actually write during this challenge and what was the goal?

As I stated, I wrote 30 pieces varying between short stories, poetry, and flash fiction. I will not go into full detail about them all, but you can find them here. If we get technical, I mostly wrote flash fiction pieces; 200-600 words, and one true short story with >1000 words. Arguably that was one of my favourites and made me realise that I do love to write short stories or longer pieces. But why didn’t I? The answer is simple: it was a time crunch getting all 30 pieces out in time. I work fulltime and have a daughter I take care off all by myself. Next to my job I love spending time reading and playing boardgames so that leaves little time to write. I did make writing my priority during September but I did feel the burden that it came with. Because I challenged myself to writing unique pieces there wasn’t one big storyline I could focus on or follow. Every single piece was a complete stand alone.

My top 10 letters

Because I loved writing every story and noticed that you enjoyed them as well. Here is a list of my top 10 pieces:

• Rainy day
• Let’s rewrite love
• Conversations at candlelight
• A story created from music
• The echoes of your words
• The smell of the air
• Tell me the truth
• Snapshot
• Stains on the floor
• Time

What happens next?

Next to writing those pieces for my Letters to September I also wrote blog posts like this, sharing my thoughts without using the format of a short story or flash fiction. I like sharing my thoughts and ideas with others but during the month of September I did realise that posting everyday was fun for one month but is not my style of blogging or posting. For that reason I did decide I would take a short break with posting. I still have been busy with writing, don’t worry, but more on that in a later blog post.

I will start posting very soon again, probably this week but I want to try something different for October. As I mentioned before I do enjoy writing longer posts and stories so I will start focussing on that. I still need to find my posting sweet spot, some trail and error is thus expected. But don’t fear because NaNoWriMo is right around the corner and I have big plans!

What are your thoughts about dedicating a whole month to a single challenge? And have you done something similar? What are your plans for the upcoming months? I would love to hear.

Take care and keep on writing!

-Merel