by Stephanie Morrill
Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the newly released The Revised Life of Ellie Sweet (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website.
Beginning February 1st, many of you embraced the 100 for 100 writing challenge, where you agreed to try writing 100 words for 100 days. There were 70 awesome writers who completed the challenge, and many more who tried it but for various reasons had to bow out early. I’m crazy impressed by how well you all did.
Yesterday I spent some quality time with the word tracking spreadsheet and my calculator. Here are a few things I learned:
1. Those involved in the challenge want to talk to each other. Many of you used the spreadsheet to encourage each other, which really warmed my heart. I was very isolated as a teen writer, and I longed for someone to talk about writing with. I adore this community of teen writers, and I love seeing the way you encourage and challenge each other.
Because of this, when we do the next 100 for 100 challenge (still working out the dates) I’m going to figure out a way to better facilitate conversation among the participants.
2. Many who took place in the first 100 for 100 challenge (Fall 2012) found this one more difficult. I think I’m at least partially to blame for this. With releasing/promoting two titles this spring, I wasn’t nearly as diligent about encouraging you guys. My husband pointed out that I hardly ever (maybe never?) mentioned it on the blog and that he forgot it was even going on. So I apologize for my part in the difficulty, and I promise to do better next time.
(If you completed the challenge and your name is missing from this list, please let me know so I can add it!)
For fun, I looked up who wrote the most in each of the categories. Virtual high-fives go to:
The age group who had the most members complete the challenge: 16-18 with 27.
The age group who had the most words per person: 19-21 with an average of 47,734 words per writer.
We’re giving way 250 Go Teen Writers store points to five random writers who completed the challenge. The winners are:
The 5,000 word critique (a prize eligible to all writers in the 19-21 category for having the highest average word count among the competitors) goes to: Arlette G.
The 10,000 word critique (a prize eligible to all writers who completed the challenge) goes to: Jacinta Swindell