2,024 Words Per Day in 2024…
2024 Challenge
Challenge yourself to average 2,024 words per day for the entire year of 2024. These would need to be consumable words.
What are “consumable” words?
— Any fiction of any type (no requirement to publish during the challenge time)
— Any nonfiction that others will consume such as blogs, introductions to collections things like that.
— emails and comments on Facebook or blogs do NOT count.
No genre limitations.
Rules of Turn-In
1… Every month (or more often if it helps you) you must send me an email giving me your word count. I do not want to know what you are writing, just how much.
The cost is $600.
(No credit from anything, I am afraid. Can’t buy in with credit to get more credit.)
If you miss and give up at any point, you get $600 credit toward any online teaching, such as Pop-Up series or lectures or classics or lifetime workshops.
So in essence, you are buying at least $600 credit.
If you average 2,024 words per day by the end of the year you get the following nifty awards.
- You get your choice of any Lifetime Subscription WMG Publishing has to offer. (except the Everything Subscription.
- You also get a BEAUTIFUL TROPHY AWARD. This trophy is a hand-blown glass float from the Oregon Coast. (Photo by Travel Oregon.)
JUST FOR SIGNING UP
Just for signing up and paying the fee, you get the following to help you along in your challenge:
- You get a nifty WMG Publishing t-shirt that says “I Am Writing 2,024 Words Per Day in2024.”
- You get a nifty WMG Publishing 15 oz mug that says “I Am Writing 2,024 Words Per Day in2024.”
(Not Everything Subscribers, sorry. But you get the beautiful trophy award if you hit it. If you sign up for the challenge as an Everything Subscriber and want the mug and t-shirt you can buy them at a discount, but the t-shirt and mug are not for sale in general. Only those doing the challenge get them.)
I will also do some motivational videos at times just for fun. Not every week, but as things come up, to help you stay on pace and advice on how to catch up when falling behind.
So, in Summary…
Challenge Yourself to Write, on Average, 2,024 Words Per Day for 2024.
— Cost is $600. (The $600 gets you that much credit for anything on Teachable if you don’t hit. If you write the average of 2,024 words, you get a Lifetime Subscription of your choice and a beautiful hand-blown glass float we call the BEAUTIFUL TROPHY AWARD.
— Just for signing up, you get a WMG Publishing T-shirt with the slogan on it “I Am Writing 2,024 Words a Day in 2024.” And you get you get a WMG Publishing 15 oz mug with the slogan on it “I Am Writing 2,024 Words a Day in 2024.”
Just to keep you motivated on those dark mornings.
This is a win/win/win challenge. Jump in, should be great fun!
And yes, you can do more than one challenge at the same time. Challenge against Kris for January and against me for the entire year and then yourself. We are trying to help you get writing in 2024.
Questions, write me or ask here in the comments.
11 Comments
Mary
I really like the idea of this challenge. And the thought of the mug and a potential trophy is fun. And I know I need to get my ass in gear, and two thousand words a day isn’t really that much.
But I am so bad at word count challenges. Numbers mess with my head in a way where I get focused on the numbers and not the words, and it happens every time. I have to come up with a different challenge for myself this year.
Linda Reuling
I want a t-shirt!
dwsmith
I think you might have an in, so that can be arranged. (grin) I’ll show pictures of them next week here.
Have a wonderful New Year’s Eve…
Alexander Boukal
Don’t know if I will be participating in this challenge this year, but would be down for doing the challenge in 2025.
Any chances of making this a yearly or every-other-year thing?
dwsmith
The 2,024 words per day with nifty mug, t-shirt, and beautiful trophy might very well be an annual thing.
K.J. Morgan
So excited to do this challenge!!
Richard Keenan
Dean! I just watched and listed to your interview and time on the “Six Figure Author Podcast” 4 years ago and you are such an inspiration for me! Found you here form that. I am actually writing my very first novel, and fantasy novel right now in 2024! Have my word count goal and I was stuck on some aspects of my outline and characters and learning so so much over the last few years as I’m now writing my very first novel I will Indie Publish myself. Thank you so much Dean for the inspiration you are to me, and all the tips you have given to us new writers, Dads and husbands, etc. who are writing our first novels. Thank you Dean! Here we go! Having so much fun with it, and thanks for all your helpful tips and I can’t wait to keep learning as I’m writing. Your interview gave me tips to just write the next logical sentance that makes sense to me and my Characters. To just write my first novel and just get it done so I can learn from this experience of finishing my first work. I will write more, and just keep going. Thanks!
dwsmith
You are more than welcome, Richard. But also keep remembering as you are writing to keep learning. That is critical.
And to have fun.
Richard Keenan
Dean just wrote this down of all I have learned from you since finding you online yesterday for the first time. Wow! Yes I will keep on learning and thank you so much! I had to share this with you and for others as a summary of my last two days of learning form your interviews and advice.
Crafting Gold!
The Life Changing Writing Advice & Lessons I have learned from Dean Wesley Smith in two days:
==============================================================================
Wow! I didn’t know about or find Dean Wesley Smith until yesterday when I was searching on youtube for different well known writer and author interviews giving advice to us newer writers. I stumbled upon several interviews on Youtube with Dean, and was absolutely blown away by what I have learned from him the last two days alone by watching and listening to these interviews with him. They are pure gold of decades of knowledge and experience he is so generously giving and passing down to the next generation of writers and authors. Not that fools gold that so often can lead the ignorant astray, but this is a fine and pure gold.
I am so blessed to learn all this so far as I am only two chapters into writing my very first book, and fantasy novel. I wrote down in my writing file all that I have learned from watching interviews with Dean Wesley Smith the last two days. I can only imagine of the other great things I will continue to learn as well as I press forward in the craft. This is such amazing advice that I just have to also share it here with everyone. If this advice is truly followed, I believe it will be so helpful in making many other full-time Indie self published writers in the near future. I know that is my plan. Again thank you Dean for all you are doing to pass the baton of all your success, knowledge, encouragement, and experience onto the next generation of writers!
1) Write into the Dark is trusting yourself! Knock down all the critical voice blocks and write the fun stuff like a child you desire to write! Have fun! -Dean Wesley Smith
2) Nail your openings. Do depth. Pull the reader in right away to your setting. Get the readers down inside the characters head. -Dean Wesley Smith
3) Just write the next sentence that makes sense to you! And then write the next sentence, and let the Characters go where they are going and want to go. -Dean Wesley Smith
4) Stages of writers stage one and two all writers tend to care about is the spelling and gammer, as well as how they sound. Experienced stage four writers, we don’t care about spelling and grammar, we just write it. Pay more attention to the story and the Characters, weather things work together. Give what the reader loves. Go play! -Dean Wesley Smith
5) We don’t do rewriting from the front of the brain, the critical voice! Leave the feel and trust your original voice. Don’t let an editor change things. Only do copy editing fixing you typos, no rewriting the stuff you wrote from the creative voice. Trust your stories and put it out! I’m always moving and looking forward, not rewriting in the past. I’m always doing and writing the next thing, not fixing something in the past. Just focus on doing the next thing, writing the next thing, not looking back at fixing the past. -Author Dean Wesley Smith
6) “Don’t worry about how you are writing it! That is the worst thing you can worry about. That is your critical voice on the front of your brain, the one that is always negative. How do you tell between the creative voice and the critical voice? The creative voice is always positive, always positive; “Oh this will be fun!”, “Oh let’s go do this!”, “Oh this is fun, lets try this!”, it is the two year old child having fun. That is what you want to access. But the critical voice is always negative, “No, don’t do that.”, “No, people will hate that.”. Critical voice is always worried, always afraid you’re going to do something wrong. If you write that critical voice it will be boring and dull stuff like everyone else. You want the true you inside to come out, that two year old kid. Saying lets go play, and lets go have fun! Creative voice is let’s go play! If you can access the creative voice of “let’s go play!”, and have the courage to not touch it, have the courage to only fix the typos and then release into the world you will be surprised. I learned back in the day if I just played and released it then I sold. But I got stuck for seven years in the critical thinking I needed to fix it and never sold a thing. It wasn’t until I got back to Heinlein’s Rules, just wrote it, fixed the typos, and mailed it that then I started selling again. The moment you can get past this and trust in yourself is the moment you win.” -Dean Wesley Smith
7) “Just be prolific! The people succeeding in the Indie movement are usually four or more books a year.” -Dean Wesley Smith
8) “Keep writing, keep learning, and keep publishing things out! Write more! Get more published on the market. Get to that first twenty major books mark.” -Dean Wesley Smith
9) “Three things that stop sales that beginning writers don’t what to hear. First thing that keeps you from selling is your covers suck, you are not imitating your genre. You think they are good but they actually suck for the genre. You have to have these covers branded to the genre, and look professional! Second is you are not writing actually good sales copy. You are not writing good sales copy if there is a passive verb in it! Not good sales copy if you are giving too much plot. If you are not telling the reader what they are buying, versus the plot of what they are buying you are not writing good sales copy. The third thing that keeps you from selling, is your openings. You don’t do depth, you don’t pull the reader in right away to a setting. You don’t get the readers down inside the characters head. If you are standing inside book store, you see the great cover, you read the blurb and sales copy, you open it up and read the first page or two. Those are the these that will stop you, or make you. The first lines you have to pull the reader down so they want to buy it. Get your first twenty major titles out like this, and analyze these things if your not selling.” -Dean Wesley Smith
10) “Getting stuck happens running into a dead end all the time when writing. You just get inside your Characters head, and ask how would your character solve it. It truly is that simple. Writing a book is like riding a roller coaster, you don’t know where the next turn is. You don’t know what is going to happen, but you do know you are going to end up at the ending and be happy. There is points where you are going to feel like you’re falling off the tracks, and that is the point of a good roller coaster. Is it really going to make that turn? What you do, is so simple and it’s the hardest to remember. All you do is just write the next sentence. Don’t try and figure it out and go ahead that is your critical negative voice trying to figure it out. Your creative voice knows where it’s going. Just write the next logical sentence after the previous one, you keep doing this and it works every single time to get the creative voice going.” -Dean Wesley Smith
11) “You are not stuck within the linear timeline of your story or novel! You can go back or forward and jump whenever you like to at whatever moment to write. I’m a one draft writer.” -Dean Wesley Smith
12) I thanked Dean on his blog yesterday for all this amazing advice I have learned in the last two days of finding him on Youtube interviews. He said to me, “You are more than welcome, Richard. But also keep remembering as you are writing to keep learning. That is critical. And to have fun.” -Dean Wesley Smith to me!
13) I follow Heinlein’s five simple business rules for writing he did in 1946. I learned these from Dean Wesley Smith teaches;
1) You must write! Make the time to write!
2) You must finish what you write!
3) You must not rewrite! Only edit typos and publish!
4) You must put it on the market!
5) You must keep it on the market!
14) “Write the book and story you want to right. Right the length and book you want to right. That is the only success down the road. No matter what it is, no matter what genre, write what you love. It’s the only way you can be long term.” -Author Dean Wesley Smith
15) I thanked Dean here above on his blog yesterday for all this amazing advice I have learned in the last two days of finding him on Youtube interviews. He said to me, “You are more than welcome, Richard. But also keep remembering as you are writing to keep learning. That is critical. And to have fun.” -Dean Wesley Smith to me on his wonderful blog and website
Thank you Dean for impacting me and the next generation of writers! Thank you even in the first two days I have found you for impacting me as a new writer at 39 years old having fun writing my very first novel! Yes, I will continue to keep learning, and I will have fun in the process! I feel encouraged with the tools I need to move forward.
Thank you Dean!
-Richard Keenan
dwsmith
Wow, I said all that in some interviews. (grin) Now granted I have said a lot of that over and over in different workshops, just never had anyone put it together like that before. Thanks!
Now the most difficult, and the most fun, will be in the writing. Caution on making this first book too important. Don’t try to make it perfect, just have fun writing and finishing it and then move on. Perfect and important are critical voice killers of the fun.
And would you mind if I posted that on the main page of my blog? It was very kind of you to do.
Now go write the next thousand words on the novel. (grin)
Richard Keenan
Thank you Dean! (grin)
Will do!
Thanks and I will follow this wonderful advice! Yes, you absolutly can post it! There are a few typos that I didn’t catch before submitting the comment version that need to be tweaked I see hehe. But yes! It will continue to be helpful for others.
(grin)