I’m participating in the PaWriCo March Madness Challenge

I’m not ashamed to admit it. I miss Nanowrimo.

Well, no. I don’t really miss the organization. I sure don’t miss their offensive dismissals of the harm AI can do to writers. I miss the writing community and all the warm fuzzies I got. I miss meeting new people, writing as part of a collective, and all the bonding. And I sure miss the productivity boost all of the excitement around challenges like this always gives me.

Of course, I’m not alone. Writing is a lonely occupation. It involves a lot of sitting in quiet rooms writing things that someday someone will (hopefully) sit in a quiet room and read. We need to get together with our people and feel like we’re doing something as a team. And since writers are generally creative and self-motivated, it was just a matter of time until one of us stepped up and made a new challenge for all of us.

In this case, it was two of us. Specifically, two authors named Rain Sullivan and Jen Woodrum. They came together and created the Pathfinder Writer’s Collective. And I am here for it!

Their first challenge started last year in November. Because of course. But it was different than Nanowrimo. It was more of a choose your own adventure writing challenge. And it was also three months long, from November first to January 31st. And I learned about this on January 29th, on a Write As Rain Instagram post.

Sad trombone music.

Reading the comments it became that, somehow, I wasn’t the only person who was just finding out about this challenge. But, the creators also gave us some hope. A hint that something was coming in March.

Enter the Pathfinders Writing Collective March Madness Challenge.

The goal of this challenge is simple. Write as much as you can in March. But you’re not just trying to hit an arbitrary number. Instead, participants will be split into two teams, Team Green and Team Orange. And every hour you write goes towards your team’s score. There are fun writing sprints and other exciting community events that will take place on the Pathfinders Writing Collective Discord. Fun, right?

Now, I’m writing this on Tuesday. You’ll be seeing it on Friday. The teams are going to be announced on Wednesday. So I can’t yet tell you which team I’m on. I can tell you that it’s probably too late to join.

Sorry about that. But I’ll have some good news for you regarding that at the end of this post.

You might wonder what I plan to work on during this joyful month of overwriting. Well, as always, it’s complicated. See, I’m going to finish the rough draft of Aurora about halfway through the month. I hope. So, when that’s done, I’ll be working on the third draft of a novel I’ve been keeping under wraps for several years now.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell you about it soon. Getting the third draft done will certainly help with that.

Alright, but since it’s probably too late for you to participate in March Madness, what can you look forward to from the Pathfinders Writing Collective? Well, they are of course doing their PaWriCo event in November through January. But, they’re also planning a boot camp event in June and July. I don’t know a lot about what that will entail just yet. But so long as March Madness goes well and no one else ends up hospitalized, I’ll be able to let you know. In the meantime, I’m excited to participate in a new writing challenge.

Wish me luck.

If you’re participating in the PaWRiCo March Madness, let me know in the comments. And if there’s another writing challenge that deserves some attention, let us know about that too.

Did you know I wrote a Novel Planner? You can get it now on my Ko-fi shop.