Official Review: The 30-Day Writing Challenge: Begin or E...

[Winter]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The 30-Day Writing Challenge: Begin or Enhance Your Daily Writing Habit" by Sara Crawford.]

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The 30-Day Writing Challenge offers an excellent bank of exercises and ideas to help you with your writing. It is intended for a large spectrum of readers. It is both for experienced writers who want to boost their writing, and for new writers who need help getting started.

The book is broken into three sections, which are then broken down by day. Section one is “Creativity and Inspiration,” and covers days one through ten, section two is “Technique” and covers days eleven through twenty, and section three is “Exploring Different Forms and Genres,” and covers days twenty-one through thirty. A different topic is addressed each day. For example, day two focuses on the rules imposed on writers and how to prevent them from stifling creativity. For each day, there are a few paragraphs discussing the topic, followed by a writing exercise for that day. The exercises are creative writing exercises, such as asking the reader to write a piece using a certain set of words, or from a certain genre. The author allows for flexibility, saying in her introduction that readers can change the order of the exercises if they choose, though she recommends respecting the order of the sections.

I read this book from the standpoint of a non-experienced writer. Though I like to write, I don’t do so regularly, and haven’t specifically studied writing. Overall, I found the book very helpful, and think it would be useful for an experienced writer as well. It is pleasant to read and use: the tone is friendly and the exercises are fun and varied. I liked its methodical approach. If for you, like me, creativity tends to rhyme with chaos, this approach helps rein that in so it can be handled in an organized way. It makes it more manageable.

If someone were to use this book as intended, that is to say read it and do an exercise every day for thirty days (or at least work on it almost every day, even if it takes a while longer) it would require a certain time commitment. The author advises readers to set aside at least thirty minutes a day. I think that’s pretty accurate for many of the exercises, although some take longer than others. Even then, though, those thirty plus minutes need to be calm time, where you can really focus. I think it would be great to do this every day as the author encourages, but in my case, that’s just not always (or even often) possible. If this is hard for you, too, I still think the book can be useful. I plan on returning to various exercises at my leisure, when I need that extra boost, or have some time to work on writing, but not enough to delve into a full-on project. Though not originally intended to be used this way, I think the book can be a great resource to have on hand as needed. With that in mind, one really nice thing is that the nature of the exercises allows them to be done over and over again. Readers can go back to them as much and as often as they want, each time getting something new out of them.

The descriptions of each topic were a little short for my taste. I appreciate that the objective is to get the reader busy writing, not spending too much time reading each day. Still, there were times I wished the author had expanded further on the explanations and discussions of the topics. The book is not very long. It is 80 pages double-spaced, including images, lists, etc. Don’t get me wrong – I would much rather that it be short and to the point like it is, instead of being full of fluff and hard to follow. Still, a little more filling out might have been nice.

After much hesitation, I’ve decided to rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I almost gave it four, but the descriptions of each topic discussed were a little too light for me. That said, it still contains a lot of beneficial information. If you want a short, no-nonsense book with lots of exercises that will push you to get writing and help you in your creative process, then this is a good book for you.

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Buy "The 30-Day Writing Challenge: Begin or Enhance Your Daily Writing Habit" on Amazon

[Little House]

This book sounds like it might fit into an English class for one of my homeschooled kids. I will have to look into it.

[DickDatchery]

I need something like this. It's time to get writing into gear. . .

[stoppoppingtheP]

Looks like something I would like, to get myself into shape. But I'm just so lazy...

[ALRyder]

One of my favorite books on writing is "What If", and it's completely full of writing exercises. This looks like it would be just as good, but maybe a little more focused (which is definitely a good thing).