I just concluded hosting Story Circle Network’s “20 Minutes a Day” January writing challenge. We had 44 participants who committed to writing for 20 minutes a day from January 2 until today, January 30th. Here’s to your success, writing participants!

Daughter Liz Beaty, SCN’s program director, and I created this program a few years ago. This is based on my discovery working with my private writing students that their writing improved dramatically with only 20 minutes of non-stop writing a day. This is our 3rd challenge and each one is amazingly satisfying.

I made two 10-minute motivational videos a week, which Liz and I sent out to participants along with reading material and optional weekly writing prompts. We also had two Zoom gatherings for the participants, where they could read a favorite piece they’d written on one of their 20 minutes a day of writing. The final reading was last night. Hearing everyone’s stories and seeing their happy faces was such a treat! Each had an accountability group where they could check in on each other’s progress over the month. Many found these groups incredibly helpful.

I also committed to writing 20 minutes a day for the entire month of January. I posted my writing on my blog daily. I had a slip-up one day, but I picked myself up and wrote the next day. I am back on my writing streak and don’t want to break it.

I’m so pleased with the success of our 20-Minutes-a-Day Challenge. If you’ve ever wanted to write (or start any new habit for that matter), try doing whatever you want to do only for 20 minutes a day for one month. You’ll be surprised how your whole life will shift and re-order itself to find those 20 minutes if you make that commitment. The key is one day at a time. We all know the magic of that approach in many areas of our lives.

Congratulations to all of our participants. Thank you for joining us at Story Circle Network for the writing challenge. We are very proud of you!