For the past ten days I’ve counted down to today. Here, on twitter and facebook, I’ve counted down, and now it’s time to tell you why.

Next month is August. It’s Paper Beats World’s birthday. It’s first birthday.

I wanted to do something special, something exciting. Here’s what I came up with.

I love thirty day challenges. Take a month, and see what you can do to better your life in some specific area. No spend months, positive thinking months, tidying for ten minutes a day, I’ve done them all. Now, I want to do one with you.

For thirty days, I want to come up with a different, brand new idea. It can be an idea for a short story, a novel, a character, a plot bunny (I do love my plot bunnies), whatever comes to mind. The point is to make sure you find some time every day to think of something new.

I think that this is a practice that can help every writer, no matter where on the road you are.

For new writers, ideas are valuable and might be thin on the ground. If you’ve written one book, but aren’t sure where you want to go next, you might need a little push. Even if you’ve been at this awhile, sometimes your imagination gets stagnate.

As for me, I’m working on a series. That means that I’ve been living in the same universe through two books now. I love the Woven universe, but even the best toy gets boring if you play with it too much. I depend on short stories to keep my imagination fresh. I am always seeking out new ideas even if I don’t think it will fit into Woven. Either I can write a short story that have nothing to do with Woven. Or, maybe something will click in my brain, and I’ll realize I can use it any way.

So what does signing up for the thirty day challenge mean for you?

-You’ll get an e-mail every day, reminding and inspiring you to come up with a new idea. Sometimes it will have a prompt or guide, but you don’t have to follow that if you don’t want to. The important thing is to create a new idea.
-I’ll be hosting twitter chats every Thursday at 8:00. We’ll get together and talk about ideas and the amazing things we writers do with them
-After the event is over, you’ll be left with a notebook full of ideas. Think of it as your shield against writers block.
-You might also be left with a good habit. If you spend thirty days thinking of something brand new, maybe you’ll find that on the thirty first day, one comes to you just out of habit.

If you want to join the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge, click here.

As a bonus, it will also sign you up to receive the road to full time newsletter once a month.

Your first e-mail will arrive on July 31. And, of course, I’ll be participating in the challenge as well.