30-day Writing Challenge: How To Overcome Writer’s Block

Have you ever been stuck in a writing slump and thought that a 30-day writing challenge would only reinforce how stuck you feel? Believe it or not, I had a book idea I’d been sitting on for a long time and a writing challenge was the only push that helped me get through.

Long story short, I was selected to test a bestselling author’s writing course and guess what? To complete the course I had to challenge myself to write an entire novel . . . on a deadline.

This turned into not just a 30-day writing challenge but a 9-month writing challenge. At the end, I had a full-length novel that I’m grateful went on to receive praise from editors at The Big 5.

If you feel like you have a bad case of writer’s block, a challenge may be just what you need to overcome and keep writing.

We’ve taught over 8,000 authors how to write, publish, and market their books over the last 10 years, and you better believe much of this has included helping writer’s get out of writing slumps. Ready to overcome yours?

30-day writing challenge: what’s covered

• How a 30-day writing challenge can help you
• The 30-day writing challenge

How a 30-day writing challenge can help you

If you’re in a slump, a 30-day writing challenge can push you through so you’re no longer an aspiring writer but a writer. Here are some specific ways a challenge can get you writing.

1. Discover fresh ideas 

A 30-day writing challenge demands you find some new ideas. Getting some fresh inspiration and forcing yourself to write about new people, places, and events will breathe some clean air into those old writerly lungs. 

These writing prompts can help you do so. In fact, they will keep you generating tons of new ideas, and a few of them will even ask you to leave your house (I know, I know, I’m evil).

2. Establish a new routine 

Second, a 30-day writing challenge means yes, you have to write for 30 days. If you want to write for a living, it’s very important that you start working on self-discipline.

No, you don’t necessarily need to be writing every single day. But think about it like this: if you didn’t go to work every day that you didn’t feel like it, would you ever go to work? A 30-day writing challenge will help you commit.

That way, instead of depending on motivation or inspiration, we can depend on ourselves. Yay! 

3. Dedicate time to practice 

Finally, a 30-day writing challenge will show you that practice makes perfect. If you’re an athlete, you wouldn’t consider yourself a pro player just because you happened to hit one very impressive home run a few years ago.

You’ve got to keep working those muscles and building those skills so you can keep hitting home runs in the future. This 30-day writing challenge will keep you writing every day.

Again, you don’t necessarily have to write every day for your entire life. However, by coming back and working on new prompts every day, you’ll develop some new skills and stamina. 

The 30-day writing challenge 

I’m breaking this 30-day writing challenge down week by week and day by day so you have actionable steps to take every single day for one month.

Week 1 of your 30-day writing challenge

Day 1: Go for a walk or drive around your neighborhood. Write a poem about one of the buildings you see.

Ask yourself:

• Who used to live or work there?
• Do they still?
• What do they do there now? 

Bonus points if you write about a building you’ve never noticed before.

Day 2: Put random coordinates into Google Earth and see what comes up. Write a paragraph, no more, about what you see. Even if you landed in the middle of the ocean, take moment to describe what’s there and what you think might be lurking. 

Day 3: Make a list of all of your writerly goals for the next calendar year.

Consider the following questions:

• Do you want to finally finish up that manuscript?
• Start finding cover designs for your novel?
• Find beta readers?

No matter how far-fetched it may feel, write it all down. This is your creative brain dump.

Day 4: Consider your favorite book from childhood. Write a short story (or just a brainstorm because there’s no pressure to create a complete work here) about an alternate ending.

Day 5: Rewrite a Disney movie from the POV of the villain. This can be a movie script, a short story, or just notes in your phone. 

Day 6: Take one of your favorite stories and turn it into a poem, or vice versa. This can be something you’ve written or an old favorite off your shelf. 

Day 7: Make a list of your favorite tropes in TV shows, movies, or books. Tropes are the building blocks of fiction, and writing down your own will help you identify what you like and what you might want to write about in the future! 

Week 2 of your 30-day writing challenge

Day 8: For one day, keep a detailed journal about where you’ve been, how you’re feeling, what you’re eating, and the conversations you’ve had. Nothing profound needs to happen except that you write.

Day 9: Go to a coffee shop or bar and write down a conversation you overhear. If you’re unable to go to a coffee shop or bar, try this with a TV show you’ve never seen before. 

Day 10: Use the last line of your overheard conversation as the prompt for a scene. 

Day 11: Turn the overheard conversation into a short story (you can get a lot of mileage out of eavesdropping, it turns out!). 

Day 12: Take a random book off your shelf. Flip to any page and take a look at the first sentence. Use that sentence to start a short story or poem. 

Day 13: Pick an emotion and write a piece of flash fiction about that feeling. Flash fiction can be up to a thousand words, but keep it as short as possible. 

Day 14: Take your journal, notebook, or laptop (if possible) outdoors. Describe your surroundings as if you were a complete stranger. 

Week 3 of your 30-day writing challenge

Day 15: Take a stroll, drive, or hike to a new place, and bring something to write with, even if it’s just your phone! When you get to where you’re going, write stream of consciousness for fifteen minutes.

Day 16: Locate one of your favorite books. Write down everything you love about it. Is it the characters? If so, which characters are your favorite, and why? Just like with tropes, knowing what we love in media will help us recreate it in our own work. 

Day 17: Using a book you own or have already read, write a short story and imitate that author’s style. Try to sound as much like them as you possibly can.

Once you do this, take a look at your previous writing and this new writing and really get into what makes their style distinct from yours. This will help you articulate your voice.

Day 18: Go back to a book that you truly hate, if you still have a copy. What did you dislike about it? Make a list (you guessed it!) of everything in it that didn’t work for you. Why didn’t you like them?

Day 19: Take the list of things you didn’t like about that book and write down ways you might have fixed those problems. Writing is subjective, but we all have aspects we think work or don’t.

Day 20: Turn something that you’ve written or something you’ve read into a writing prompt. Send that prompt to a writer friend and see what sort of story ideas they come up with! 

Day 21: Similarly, ask your friend to describe their favorite book or movie without giving away which book or movie it is. Use this description as a writing prompt, and when you’re done, ask your friend which story they were describing to see where you differed. 

Week 4 of your 30-day writing challenge

Day 22: Grab that list of writing goals you made from Day 3. What’s the most pressing goal on that list or the one you want to do the most? If it’s all important and you can’t pick, choose one at random.

Day 23: Write a letter to yourself from the perspective of you, as a successful author, a decade from now. 

Day 24: Write a fake job posting for a different era in history. For example, write a job posting for a footman at Downton Abbey, as you think it might appear in the London papers. If you’re not sure how to do that, research newspapers from the era in history you’re interested in! 

Day 25: Turn your favorite feel-good story into a dramatic horror. 

Day 26: Invent a new character, completely from scratch. They can be someone for an existing project, someone to fit into the world of your favorite show, or someone totally random. It doesn’t matter. Find a character creation template and fill it out with every detail about them. 

Day 27: Try finding a writing partner! This often takes more than one day, but lay the groundwork. Check out the #amwriting tag on X/Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok, or see if your local college or library has a creative writing club or poetry meetup.

One of the best ways to stick with writing is to find a community of like-minded people to commiserate and hold one another accountable. It doesn’t happen overnight, but see what your options are! 

Day 28: If you don’t usually listen to music while you write, pick some music to listen to. Make a journal entry about how that type of music makes you feel and whether it’s helped.

Final two days

Day 29: Describe a favorite childhood memory from the point of view of an unreliable narrator. 

Day 30: Take a look at all the snippets and pieces you’ve made over the last thirty days and give yourself a pat on the back for all your hard work! Pick five of your favorite new stories or pieces and set them aside to work on later. 

30-day writing challenge: take your next step

I hope this 30-day writing challenge gave you some new ideas for a story, or at least got you thinking about what you want to work on next.

The point isn’t to complete this challenge, but instead to practice writing and keep writing. Just as my 9-month writing challenge resulted in a completed manuscript, this 30-day writing challenge can result in forward progress toward your goals.

To really take this challenge to the next level, finish it off by using our free resource to outline your next book!

This blog was rewritten from the original version published by Gloria Russell.