There are many writerly folk who swing by here, so I’m posting a note about Jan’s second annual August Writing Challenge.

Here’s how Jan presents the project:

Jan’s August Writing Challenge
Write something every day in the month of August.

Sounds tough! What do I have to do?
Write. Something. Anything. Any length. Prose or poetry. Every day. For a month. And share it.

Sounds cool! How do I sign up?

* Join the august_writing community if you’re not already a member [Note: if you don’t have an LJ account, you’ll need to set one up so that you can join the community. It’s free, and you don’t have to actually use the journal; heck, I don’t, I only use it to join communities like this and leave comments!]
* Link to this post in your LJ or journal so that we can get as many people involved as possible
* Post either your writing, or a link to your writing, to the community every day in August, starting on Tuesday, August 1st, 2006.

Sounds simple! Are there any other rules?
Nope. Well, not really. It has to be creative writing – prose or poetry, of any any length, on any subject. Stuff you would normally be writing anyway counts (so, for those who write serials, that counts) but stuff you write for your job doesn’t. But it can be anything. Short fiction, short-short fiction, essays, character studies, stream-of-consciousness, writing exercises (like last year I’m going to try to post a different writing exercise every day for anyone who would like to use it), sections of a larger work you have in progress, etc. Anything at all, so long as it’s a self-contained piece of writing that you did that day. It would also be really cool if you could read and comment on a couple of other posts every day.

The problem I ran into last year was the stuff-you-write-for-your-job-doesn’t-count, because after working with the green witch rewrites and a six week old baby, there was no time left even for little bits. I think I managed to post things on eight days out of the thirty-one. This year may or may not be different, since I’ve got another book to deliver this fall. I’m going to give it my best shot, though.

It’s a terrific exercise, because everyone shares tips and tricks and supports one another in getting something, anything out every day. People who didn’t consider themselves writers joined and surprised themselves at how much they accomplished. We all saw some awesome stuff, saw some new projects develop, and shared insight into the creative process. Wander over, take a look, sign up and join the fun!