It’s that time of year! Summer break has begun (or is about to begin) and that means it’s time for another 100-for-100 writing challenge!

What is the 100-for-100? The challenge is to write (at least) 100 words a day, every day, for 100 days. This writing challenge is open to writers of all ages and is the most popular event we host all year.

100 words is about a paragraph. You can likely do it in 10 minutes or less. While it might seem like just a drop in the bucket, all those drops add up to 10,000 words in your manuscript by the end of the 100 days. And that’s if you do the bare minimum! Not bad, right?

Here’s how the challenge works:

1. You sign up by clicking the teal button up there or at the end of this post. You must be signed up by noon central time on Monday, June 12th if you want to play along. You’ll receive an email from me welcoming you to the challenge. If you don’t receive that email, please let me know! Stephanie(at)StephanieMorrill.com.
2. Beginning on Monday, June 12th you write 100 words on the project of your choice. You must pick one project to work on for the 100-for-100 challenge. Only words for that that project count toward your daily words. Here are the exceptions:

• If you finish your project. Hooray for finishing projects! If this happens, just pick something else to work on.
• If you and your project part ways. This happened to me one year. The 100-for-100 coincided with a writers conference, and I pitched my 100-for-100 book to an editor at the conference. It did NOT go well. Sometimes things happen and we lose interest for good reasons.

3. You write 100 words a day everyday until Tuesday, September 19th, and you keep track of it. At the end of the challenge, you’ll send me your tracking sheet. Here’s a link to one I’ve made, but you don’t have to use this one. (This link will give you access to view it but not make changes. You can print it out, download it, or save a copy to your own Google Drive. If you’re having trouble with it, let me know.) Somehow, though, you need to keep track of how many words you’ve written so that I can see. A few notes about your words:

• You are allowed one “grace day” per week. Sometimes life happens or people choose to take one day off as a spiritual practice and we want to respect that. You also get one “grace week” per contest. This might be a week that you write nothing at all, or it could be a week that you only write two days instead of 6 or 7. You just count up what you have and press on.
• You can write more than 100 words each day if you like. Most people find they do! But you can’t write 700 words on Monday and nothing the rest of the week and still participate in the challenge. The idea is to develop a writing discipline. So some days you might write 1,000 words and others you might barely get in your 100.
• Yes, you can write by hand. Just add the words up as best you can. With my handwriting, I usually have 10 words per line so I just go with that. We all have way more important things to do with our lives than count individual words in a notebook!

4. When the challenge is over, you send me your form. Then two things will happen:

• You get my admiration and respect. I have actually never made it all the way to the end. I’m giving it another go this year.
• We post your name on a list on the website as someone who totally rocks.

Get yourself signed up:

Frequently asked questions:

Does editing or rewriting count?

If you edit like I do, where your manuscript is growing as you edit, then yes it does.

Does brainstorming for your story count? E.g. character journals, outlining, etc.

Yes!

Does the “grace week” have to be seven days in a row taken off, or can you take a day off here and there and have it add up to be a week?

The grace week is meant to be seven consecutive days. The heart behind building in the grace week was that I didn’t want people stressing out about not writing on a family vacation or at summer camp.

We will be using the hashtag #GTW100for100 on social media. You can follow the Go Teen Writers account here.

I hope you’ll join us!

Questions? Drop them in the comments section below.

Stephanie Morrill writes books about girls who are on an adventure to discover their unique place in the world. She is the author of several contemporary young adult series, as well as two historical young adult novels, The Lost Girl of Astor Street and Within These Lines. Within These Lines was a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, as well as a YALSA 2020 Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Since 2010, Stephanie has been encouraging the next generation of writers at her website, GoTeenWriters.com, which has been on the Writer’s Digest Best Websites for Writers list since 2017. She lives in the Kansas City area, where she loves plotting big and small adventures to enjoy with her husband and three children. You can connect with Stephanie and learn more about her books at StephanieMorrill.com, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.