The 2023 Writing Challenge
In June 2020, owing to the pandemic, I registered my son’s birth over the phone three months late. The process involved sending an email and then waiting for a call back that would come at some unknown date and time. A few weeks later Ricardo from the local register office calls me from his living room, his kids intermittently screaming in the background.
“What’s your occupation?”
“Is now a good time to register the baby?” he asks. I confirm and he begins his questions. We are making steady progress until he asks what my occupation is. “Um, wait, why are you asking that? Will the answer I give now be what’s written on the birth certificate?” “Yes,” he says, “Whatever you tell me now is what will be printed on your son’s birth certificate.”
I explain to Ricardo that he has unwittingly posed an existential question and ask him to give me a minute. I go to the bedroom where John is entertaining the kids. “What should I say?” There’s a history here that he is well aware of.
Our marriage certificate lists my occupation as “marketing consultant,” which was true at that time. Our daughter’s birth certificate says the same thing but by that point it was no longer accurate, I just didn’t know how to articulate what I did. Marketing consultant is still the term I default to when buying insurance or being forced to select an option from a drop down menu but it’s not even remotely accurate as a description of the work I do.
We must first and foremost use the language that means something to us
So by the time I find myself with Ricardo waiting on the other end of the line I have total clarity about the fact that I can’t allow “marketing consultant” to be recorded on our son’s birth certificate. But I still am not sure what it should be replaced with. I can’t remember if John suggested it first or if I did, but in the end, under pressure, I went with “writer”.
I talk a lot about how naming ourselves and our work is an important, powerful part of the whole process. I am a firm believer that we must first and foremost use the language that means something to us, before we ever think about how the outside world may understand – or misunderstand – it. But I do not claim it to be an easy thing to do.
A couple of days after the birth certificate arrived in the post, just as I was beginning to feel like an imposter and the you’re-not-a-real-writer gremlins were kicking off in my head, another parcel arrived. It was the final version of my book. I had planned to ship it months earlier and had been frustrated with the Covid related delays, but it seems it arrived at the perfect time after all.
The Most Magical Thing of All
I am currently in the midst of running a 10-week immersive program with a cohort of customers from across the globe. We have people in Ireland, Scotland, England, Colombia, New Zealand, Canada, and all across the US, from California to Florida and every time zone in between.
Every time I bring together a group like this online I marvel at the magic of the internet and the power of writing. I am reminded that the thing that has driven my work and powered my business for years now, is the simple act of writing and sharing that writing publicly.
The simple act of writing – and sharing it publicly – powers my business
As incredible as the technology that gives us the internet is, the most magical thing of all might be writing. I like Stephen King’s description of writing as “an act of telepathy” when the reader reads the writer’s words. He says, “I never opened my mouth and you never opened yours. We are not even in the same year together, let alone the same room… except we are together. We are close. We’re having a meeting of the minds.”
I wrangled for such a long time with the conundrum of whether or not I should call myself a writer. Whether or not I was “allowed” to call myself that. But I’ve long since stopped worrying about it. The only thing that matters to the work – and to me – is that I keep writing.
The thing I’m most sure of is that my writing is the best explanation of what I do and what my work is all about. There will never be a job title or clever elevator pitch that captures it and that’s okay. I repeatedly see people sharing my writing as a way of introducing someone new to my work and I’m more than happy with that.
No Evolution Without Writing
My work has evolved and changed over the past decade or so but the one thing that has remained consistent is writing. In fact, in many ways I believe the work was able to evolve because of the writing. It’s how I think.
A client once told me I was like an archaeologist, helping him dig through his story and carefully dust off the artefacts of significance to make sense of what had gone before. It was funny to hear it because that’s kind of how I think about writing and what it does for me.
Writing is the work of excavation
Writing is the work of excavation. It’s a sense-making process. I have all of this stuff swirling round in my head but it’s as yet unarticulated. Without the excavation that writing brings I don’t know what I think or what I know. Without that excavation the potential in my work and my business remains untapped. When I write consistently something seemingly magical happens. Stories emerge, ideas take shape, new work is born.
Over the past eight years I’ve made a ritual of beginning my year with a four-week writing series. It sets the tone for my year. It’s the perfect container for new ideas and has become the backbone of my work in many ways. I don’t worry about the specifics of what I’m going to create over the coming year because I know as long as I engage with the writing challenge, there will be plenty of raw material to work with.
A Ritual to be Shared
For the sixth year running I’m not only starting the year with a four-week writing series, I’m asking you to join me in the challenge.
Unearth the gemstones in your work and your thinking
Writing – and publishing – every weekday for four weeks is an intense process but it is rich and transformative. It’s the best way I know to unearth the gemstones in your work and your thinking. The writing challenge and daily prompts will force you to articulate your deeper ruminations. It’s a way to go from an amorphous cloud of thoughts and ideas to something tangible and communicable.
Over the past few months previous participants of the Writing Challenge have been saying, “Are you doing a writing challenge in the new year? I’m in for it. I’ve been looking forward to it.” They are getting ready. Some are excited about the burst of momentum it will give them again. Others have half-formed thoughts swimming around their head that they know will become concrete by the end of the four weeks of writing.
The 2023 Writing Challenge, starting on February 3rd, will focus on peeling back the next layer of your story. The layer that is still hidden to you, that couldn’t have been revealed until this very moment in time. Our story ripens with every passing day. The story you’re able to tell today you couldn’t possibly have told yesterday.
Our real work is always born and reborn out of our story. I talk about how the most important work we’ll ever share with the world is our story, but sharing your story aside, you can’t get your work out and understand it for yourself if you don’t examine your story, your history, your past.
The daily writing prompts for this year’s Writing Challenge will focus on unearthing hidden moments from your past. The moments in which your work, your philosophy and your genius were seeded. You will be invited to choose a theme to explore in your writing and the writing prompts will help to reveal the story of your relationship with that theme over time.
The 2023 Writing Challenge will focus on peeling back the next layer of your story
Helping people uncover their story is at the heart of so much of my work and has been for years now but I am newly reengaged with story work for very personal reasons. I’m in the midst of a writing project and working regularly with a writing mentor who is gently nudging me further into my history. I am once again deeply immersed in my own story, peeling away yet another layer, going down and down into the heart of it all. So I am excited to craft a challenge using prompts based on my understanding of story structure and narrative arcs.
When we look at our life and the origin story of our work and curiosities through a fresh filter, we shine a light on new areas and our understanding of our selves and our work can’t help but deepen.
The prompts in the 2023 Writing Challenge will lead you through four weeks of discovery and help you reveal new insights about your story and your work. I’ll also be kicking the whole thing off with a live Writing Challenge Masterclass where I’ll talk about my writing challenge approach and my approach to story work. The Writing Challenge Masterclass will happen live on Zoom on Wednesday 1st February at 4pm UK time | 11am Eastern. It will also be recorded so don’t worry if you’re not able to make it live.
The Writing Challenge is an opportunity for you to widen your audience, deepen your connection with them, and add to your body of work in a very tangible way. But it is also a sense-making exercise. The whole process will help you make sense of what your work is about, what’s truly unique about it, and what it is precisely that you’re trying to say.
My hope for you as a Writing Challenge participant is that you end up writing pieces only you could write.
Introducing The 2023 Writing Challenge
I’m inviting you to join me in a four-week writing challenge starting on Friday 3rd February 2023. Here’s how the challenge works:
Every weekday for four weeks (we’ll have weekends off) I will guide you through the writing challenge. I’ll send you a writing prompt each morning directing you on what to write about. I’ll join you in the challenge and will write a piece each day that serves as an example of the prompt in action. You can publish your daily pieces to your email list, on social media, on a blog, or to any other audience you have.
The daily writing prompts I’ll send you are designed to uncover the next layer of your story, and so, the next layer of your body of work. The prompts are informed by the storytelling model I use, with each prompt designed to address a key story element in some way. Whilst the goal is not to end up with 21 pieces that create a coherent narrative, by the end of the 21 days you will have scratched at all the key elements of your story and your audience will feel like they have a really good sense of who you are and why you’ve come to believe what you believe and do what you do.
You will be encouraged to choose a theme that you would like to explore with your writing. That topic doesn’t have to be specific to your work, it just has to be something you’re curious about and want to explore at a deeper level. It can be directly related to your work or completely unrelated. Themes I have explored in past writing challenges include uncertainty, place, self-disclosure, story, gentleness, and cultural forces.
When you register for the Writing Challenge you’ll be invited to join my private online Writing Challenge Community. I used to do this in a Facebook group, but I have now created a private standalone space away from Facebook for us that will be easy for you to access on your computer or phone. This is where you can come together with the rest of the Writing Challenge community. It’s where we’ll share our writing with each other throughout the challenge. In the private community you can talk to other members who are taking part in the writing challenge as well as ask me any questions you have as you go through the challenge. I am obviously biased but my customers are wonderful humans and the community is filled with insightful and generous people who are committed to doing the work only they can do and are willing to openly explore and share their journey with the rest of the community.
A key part of the Writing Challenge is not just writing something each day but actually having people read it. To get the most value out of the writing challenge you need to have some skin in the game. Having readers makes it real. So whether or not you choose to share your daily writings with your audience, I encourage you to share them in our private community space. In the community we can read each other’s writing, learn from each other and offer support.
The value in this Writing Challenge is in actually doing the writing. To give you an extra incentive you’ll get a 20-minute call with me if you complete the challenge. If you write each day and also share it in the private community you’ll get a 20-minute call with me where I’ll reflect on a piece of your daily writing and/or answer any questions you have.
Walk away with a body of work that reflects who you are
If you commit to the Writing Challenge then at the end of the four weeks you’ll be amazed at what you’ve written, the reaction it has generated and how much powerful content you’ve created in such a short space of time. When I did my first writing series, I wrote 18,260 words in four weeks. The average non-fiction book is around 50,000 words. I couldn’t believe how much I’d written in a month. But this is about more than quantity.
We are constantly being told we should be ‘creating content’ to build an audience online. But I am not interested in encouraging you to write just anything and contribute to the deafening wall of noise that is the internet on any given day. I’m inviting you to say something that’s true, and that only you can say. Something that matters to you. If you give yourself to the process you’ll walk away from this writing challenge with a body of work that reflects who you are and that connects with the people who get what you are all about.
How Much Time Should You Spend Writing Each Day?
when you make the commitment, you’ll find the time
In a pinch, it’s possible to do the Writing Challenge in 30 or 40 minutes a day but I recommend scheduling an hour a day for writing. Do what you need to do to find that hour; it will be the most valuable hour of your day. Get up an hour earlier each day or finish your regular work day an hour earlier and use the final hour of the day for writing. That’s how I did my first writing series. I’d let my ideas percolate through the day and then spend the final hour of the day writing. I’m a night owl so sometimes I stayed up an hour later to write if I needed to. Here’s what I’ve learned: when you make the commitment to yourself, to me and to the rest of the group, you somehow find the time.
It’s worth remembering that writing is not something you have to do sitting behind a desk either. For some people writing while on the move is the way their brain works best. Writing and exercise go very well together. I’ve been known to go for a run or a walk, let the ‘writing’ flow in my head and then pause when I need to quickly type the words that are spilling forth. So if you’ve got a regular exercise routine or a daily walk ritual then that’s a perfect time to write.
Years of Progress in Weeks
If you want to get your ideas and stories out there this year, if you want to grow your audience and put yourself into your work, if you want to create a bank of meaningful writing to use in your work, then I’d love to have you join me for the four-week Writing Challenge starting on 3rd February 2023.
Join me for the 4-week Writing Challenge starting on 3rd February
Most challenge participants will produce more meaningful, quality writing in this four weeks than they did in all of last year. My guess is you have years of experience, knowledge and wisdom but much of it is still locked inside your head because you haven’t had the time, opportunity or focus to get it out to the world. This is your chance to do that. When you commit to spending four weeks putting it out into the world you experience all of those years of effort finally coming to fruition. The momentum you’ll gain from the writing challenge may very well carry you through the rest of the year.
The Writing Challenge begins on Friday 3rd February 2023. Register now.
Your Writing Challenge Registration Includes:
- Writing Challenge Masterclass: In the masterclass I walk you through my Writing Challenge mindset and how I approach any writing sprint like this. I’ll also talk more about my understanding of story structure, how that has informed the prompts we’ll be using, and my approach to short form storytelling. The Writing Challenge Masterclass will happen live on Zoom on Wednesday 1st February at 4pm UK time | 11am Eastern. It will also be recorded so don’t worry if you’re not able to make it live.
- Daily Writing Prompts: I’ll send you a writing prompt each morning inviting you to write something in response to it. This year’s prompts are informed by the storytelling model I use in my work, with each prompt designed to address a key story element in some way. The challenge as a whole is designed to uncover a fresh layer of your story.
- Access to my private online Writing Challenge Community: Get direct access to me and other community members who are exploring the work only they can do. We’ll support each other as we write our guts out during the challenge and beyond. The connection and conversation that happens in the community in response to the writing people are sharing is many people’s favourite part of the whole writing challenge experience.
- Private One-to-One Call with me: If you complete the challenge – that is, if you complete the writing for each day and share it in our private community – you’ll get a 20-minute one-to-one call with me where I will reflect on a piece of your daily writing and/or answer any questions you have.
The Writing Challenge begins on Friday 3rd February 2023. Register now.
What People Are Saying About The Writing Challenge:
I appreciated the Be Yourself Writing Challenge for several reasons. I appreciated being in the community that Megan has established. I think a good name for it would be "The Cocoon". It's a safe place to wrap around yourself; a place where reflection and growth can occur. In this environment the daily prompts were skillful in helping me dive deeper into my past experiences. Unarticulated thoughts that had been floating around my head began to crystalize.
Stephen Harris
The reward for the modest investment and commitment has been to provide me with insights that have allowed me to start communicating with my audience on a level I couldn’t have achieved before the challenge. I’d heard about the theory and understood it, but I hadn’t committed to actually doing it, the challenge and the group provided me with the drive, the forum to deliver it too, and the feedback and encouragement I needed.
Lewis Bacon
I found the use of prompts really inspiring. Each morning I looked at the new prompt and sometimes my heart sank! But however impossible it seemed, I found inspiration would strike, usually in the afternoons when I went for a walk. I found this a powerful approach that challenged my creativity.
Chris Sissons