2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge: Guidelines
One of my favorite things to do here is host (and participate in) various writing challenges. We have annual poetry and flash fiction challenges, but we’ve tried others in the past tied to character-building, platform development, and more. But one I’ve wanted to do for the longest time is a personal essay writing challenge.
(6 Types of Personal Essays for Writers to Try.)
The time is finally right to announce the first ever Personal Essay Writing Challenge. For 2024, it will be a 7-day challenge that provides a free daily prompt during the final week of June and the chance of a featured publication on WritersDigest.com.
What Is the 2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge?
The 2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge is a 7-day writing challenge from June 24 to June 30, 2024. Each day, I will provide a personal essay prompt, and it will be up to writers to write a personal essay before they take on the next one.
I have already put together the list of prompts, and I think they’ll be easy to write whether you have experience with writing personal essays or not. And each prompt will include my own attempt at the prompt to help get people started (and to show that I’m in this as well).
It should be a fun way to finish out the month of June!
Why Should I Participate in the 2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge?
The top intrinsic benefit is that it should be a fun way to write some personal essay drafts and get some material to revise through the rest of summer. If this is like challenges of yore, it’ll also be an opportunity to virtually meet other writers and build some excitement with like-minded scribes (even if they may have different levels of experience with the personal essay format).
But I’m also offering an extrinsic benefit for everyone who is interested: I will collect one personal essay from each participant and, if there’s one (or more) good enough, I will feature and publish it on the site.
And since this challenge is completely free, the real question isn’t why should you participate, it’s why wouldn’t you participate?
How Do I Participate in the 2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge?
The first rule for any of my challenges is to have fun, but here are some others (and since this is the first time we’ve done this particular challenge, they’re subject to small tweaks):
On June 24, 2024, I’ll begin to post a task for each day for the final 7 days of June. Participants will write a personal essay in response and (if they wish) share in the comments.The challenge will run through July 1, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. (Atlanta, GA, time), because of time zones and stuff. (Note: The last task will be shared on the morning of June 30, 2024, Atlanta time. So I’m giving everyone an extra day to get everything done.)Find each day’s post either on the WritersDigest.com home page or at the 2024 Personal Essay Writing Challenge page.Everyone will be the winner of the intrinsic benefit of participating, but they will need to jump through a few hoops to be considered for publication.I will share more details on how participants can submit their personal essay in a Next Steps post (likely on July 1, 2024). That post will include an estimate of when you can expect an eventual Results post.Have fun, which is actually the first and last rule of this challenge. This is a free challenge with an intrinsic benefit of writing some new personal essays and an extrinsic benefit of possibly being featured on the site. So my hope is that this will be both fun and helpful!
What If I Have Questions?
The best place to put questions is in the comments of this post (below). And I’ve included some advice on commenting below.
If you’re unable to do that, you can send me an email at rbrewer@aimmedia.com, but be aware that my inbox is a busy place. So again, if you’re able, commenting on each post is the best strategy (in most cases).
Note on commenting: If you wish to comment on the site, go to Disqus to create a free new account, verify your account on this site below (one-time thing), and then comment away. It’s free, easy, and the comments (for the most part) don’t require manual approval (but I’ll be checking every so often, just in case).