2025 Get Started Right Writing Challenge: Guidelines

Last year, I hosted the first ever Get Started Right Writing Challenge. It was a one-week challenge to get writers started off on the right foot for a successful year. After taking off 2024, I’ve decided to bring it back, beginning on January 1, 2025.

What Is the 2025 Get Started Right Writing Challenge?

The 2025 Get Started Right Writing Challenge is a 10-day challenge from January 1 to January 10, 2025. Each day, I will provide a task (a task that I will also be completing), and it will be up to writers to finish that task before they take on the next one.

I will try to make them easy enough to accomplish, but they may still present a bit of a challenge to participants (hence, the name). Each task will be created with the goal of helping writers to get their year started off right, regardless of writing genre or level of experience.

It should be a fun warm up for a productive 2025!

Why Should I Participate in the 2025 Get Started Right Writing Challenge?

The top intrinsic benefit is that it should a fun warm up for a productive 2025. 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 write in completely different genres).

But I also have an extrinsic benefit for this challenge: Everyone who participates in this challenge can send in a poem, story, or personal essay, and I’ll share my favorite(s) along with a brief interview in a future post.

So the question isn’t why should you participate, it’s why wouldn’t you participate?

How Do I Participate in the 2025 Get Started Right Writing Challenge?

The first rule for any of my challenges is to have fun, but here are some others:

• On January 1, 2025, I’ll begin to post a task for each day in the first week of January. Participants will complete each task and comment that the task is complete and/or share their experiences with completing the task (or trying to complete it anyway).
• The challenge will run through January 11, 2025, 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 January 10, 2025, 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 2025 Get Started Right Writing Challenge page.
• Each participant will be able to send in one story (up to 500 words), poem (up to 50 lines), or personal essay (up to 500 words) after the challenge concludes.
• I will share more details on how participants can submit their story, poem, or personal essay on the morning (my time) of January 11, 2025, in a “Next Steps” post. That post will include an estimate of when I plan to share my favorites as well.
• Have fun, which is actually the first and last rule of this challenge. This is a free challenge with an intrinsic benefit of getting the year started off right. 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 I’ll be spending a lot of time with friends and family the last couple weeks of the year and may get behind on my email as a result. 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).