Another year has started and another Wriye with its wealth of challenges is underway! I must say that I was incredibly excited this year to participate in Wriye as last year was so much fail that its not even worth mentioning. Not only was I looking forward to accomplishing my writing goals, but I was also excited to reconnect with the Wriye girls! Its great motivation to hear their story ideas, their own goals and just general life chatter!

My goal for January, besides my usual 20k word goal, was to get a head start. I know me, I get excited, I write like crazy… and then life happens. It sucks, but its just the way life goes and I know that when life happens my writing motivation escapes, leaving me staring at a blank page with no desire to do anything. So a head start is pretty much a requirement if I’m to reach my goal and a head start I have! I’m only nine days in and I’m passing the 21k mark with more challenges awaiting me!

I’ve got a number of interesting challenges on the go at the moment and they’re great for keeping up my motivation. After I complete each one I can’t help but think to myself ‘what’s next?’ There is an interesting 31 Original Character Challenge which I scaled back to only 15 for fear of how many new novels that it could create. I’m using this challenge to write up all those bios that are in desperate need of some attention for the two novel series I’m primarily working on. So far so good, I’ve written up four bios and no new stories have generated. Mind you, they have definitely enriched the novels that they came from, adding new dimension and a little more mystery. I’ve got a few other bios in mind that I need to work on, so this is a great challenge for getting me doing what I should have already finished by now!

Another interesting challenge is the One, Two… Trilogy Challenge created by the very talented Keri! She knows just as well as I that writers, especially those in the genres that I like to write, are notorious for making our novels into trilogies. (Totally guilty of this myself) While we often succeed in creating that first novel in our trilogies, we don’t always finish the series. So Keri’s challenge is to actually complete our trilogies (or in the case of a couple of crazy Wriyers with word count goals MUCH higher than my own, complete a trilogy of trilogies) within the year. As it so happens I was just in the middle of my own Trilogy so signing up for this challenge was a no brainer.

I’m incredibly happy with my so far and I can only happen that life’s troubles will stay away from my doorstep long enough for me to get a good head start on the year’s writing!