Confession: I kinda forgot about the 100-for-100 this year.

Like most of you, my world got drop-kicked by Covid-19 in March, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to do all the things while all the people are home all the time.

At first, I thought 100-for-100 would be a ball I dropped this summer. And that maybe nobody would notice. Then I got more and more emails asking about when sign-ups would open, and I realized this chaotic time is the perfect season for a 100-word writing challenge.

What is the 100-for-100? The challenge is to write (at least) 100 words a day, every day, for 100 days.

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?


This writing challenge is open to writers of all ages! Here’s how the challenge works:

1. You sign up on the form at the end of this post. You must be signed up by noon central time on Monday, June 1st if you want to play along. If you live in a place where June 1st in the U.S. is your June 2nd, do whatever feels easiest for you. Either start on June 1st in your time zone or in ours.

2. Beginning on Monday, June 1st 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. She told me they already had a book in the pipeline that was basically the same concept. And that was probably the last time I ever opened that manuscript file…

3. You write 100 words a day everyday until Tuesday, September 8th, 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 we’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, plus many people take a day off a week for religious reasons and we want to respect that), and one “grace week” per contest. So if one week you only write 300 words, 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 than count individual words.

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

  • You get my admiration and respect. I have actually never made it all the way to the end. Maybe this is my year??? (I’ve been saying that for years now…)
  • You get entered for prizes! Books, gift cards, critiques, and all sorts of fun writerly things that you’ll like.
  • We post your name on a list on the website as someone who totally rocks.

Some helpful tips:

Lydia Howe is a published author and community member who faithfully did the challenge for at least 6 years. YES, SIX YEARS. Maybe even more. I’ll have to ask her. She wrote a post for us several years ago with tips for writing everyday that’s totally worth checking out!

If you’re looking for a community to do this with, the Go Teen Writers Community Facebook group is a fabulous place. We’re very careful about who has access to the group, so if you want to join, go ahead and apply, and then expedite your approval by emailing us: GoTeenWritersCommunity(at)gmail.com. If you don’t email us, it might be weeks before we get around to approving you, so definitely do that.

We will be using the hashtag #GTW100for100 on social media. Jill, Shan, and I are most active on Instagram, and you can follow the Go Teen Writers account here.

That is a great chance to rack up words and make friends this summer! We hope you’ll join us!