Are you familiar with the 300-word writing challenge? I was close to joining it last night, but I was really not sure if I can do 300 words every single day. I am an extremist when it comes to writing- either I write short (meaning one or two lines consisting of 15 words) or I write long (1,500+++ words that had one of my editors scream ‘stop’ several times). I think 300 is average. Maybe I am wrong. But I do want to get into that daily writing habit so I thought of a 30-minute writing challenge where I just write anything I have in mind for a limited time period – yes, 30 minutes! I will do this in my phone and I don’t have a word count app so I won’t know how many words will each post have. Pardon me if it gets too lengthy. But I will try very hard to make it brief. Here is today’s entry: Here’s what I think about book authors. I think they are just plain brilliant individuals, who resisted the tempting offer to just lay down and sleep, or watch television while feasting on a bag of potato chips. I don’t know how many people ever attempted to write a book. I know there are a lot. It’s one big, daunting ride to scribble your thoughts in paper or in our case, get mad on the keyboard and drum away words, periods, commas and exclamation points in the hopes of telling a story that the world will like. Then, fresh from the all-knowing World Wide Web, horrible reviews come out, written by people who sound like they have every single right to scrutinize every twist and turn of the book’s (already) wounded journey. Often times, I feel guilty in writing reviews especially when they’re negative – borderline, insensitive – because I can just imagine the internal and external battles that the writer went through before that book I lovingly lambasted came out. For you see, reading can be generally easy. But writing? It’s patience and hardwork materialized in one piece of solid matter. It’s talent, to say the least.
The 30-minute Writing Challenge
Author: C.E.L. Ruffolo
I am a journalist, teacher and social development worker who is passionate about reading and storytelling. I am crazy about books and I love to make others feel the same. I am a wife to a very wonderful man named Jeff and stage mother to fraternal twins, Nicholas and Antoinette, and resident cutie pie, Jeff Junior. For anything, write me readingruffolos@gmail.com.