You know what’s interesting? The way March seems to be embedded in the online writing community’s consciousness as a month for revision.
This is because there was NaNoEdMo (National Novel Editing Month) once upon a time. All versions of EdMo I can find are defunct, with 2019 being the most recent any seem to be active, but even before that, it wasn’t that big. Yet, it has stuck, and it seems like almost every writing community I’ve ever belonged to turns to revision in March.
I don’t really have a point, it’s just interesting to me. How pervasive the challenge was for not really ever being that big of a deal.
Writing challenges come and go, and even ones that stick around change over time. The NaNoWriMo that exists today is very different from the one I did back in 2003. Adapt or die, I guess.
As for me, I never seem to be on revision or editing in March, and I’ve certainly have never been able to finish an entire revision in a month.
Man, that’s the dream.
It is interesting to me, the way challenges age or don’t. They either get more people every year or dwindle down until they die, or sometimes the people running them don’t feel like doing it any more, or sometimes something bigger or shinier comes along and overshadows them.
I still don’t have a point, except perhaps that I like writing challenges–the idea that doing something as a group makes you more likely to actually do something.
(I suspect it doesn’t, not really, not unless you have the willpower/urge to do it anyway. Otherwise it’s just another way to feel guilty.)
Do challenges work for you, friends? Have any thoughts about ones that have gone defunct that still ripple through a community (doesn’t have to be writing related)?