How to hone your writing skills? Try this fun challenge

Has this ever happened to you?

You read something by one of your favorite writers - maybe it's a blog post, a scene from a novel, or an essay on Medium.

You are caught in the words. The way the writer twists and turns the tongue, shaping what is seen and felt as he reads.

And once the reading spell is broken, it seems...

Bang, I wish I could do that.

Seasoned creative workers - writers, painters, musicians - know how to make it look easy.

But when we try our hand... it's harder than it seems.

We all want to be good at things

Maybe you want to master the art of creative storytelling for your content. Or if you want to start your content with that satisfying "Bang!", which makes people keep reading. Or that you would really like some more shares and links.

"Enjoy the process" is fine advice, but it's even better when the process leads to real improvement. When we get better at what we do. When we start to have a greater impact.

I find this quote from Jeff Olson both intriguing and depressing:

"Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do."

The intimidation factor marketing content

We love content marketing for many reasons… but we tend to avoid it for one:

It's intimidating.

There are so many things to learn.

Actual holders. audience capture. The calls to action. The creation of shareable content. emotional and logical benefits. Empathy and cartography of experience. types of strategic content.

Not to mention techniques for specialty content like podcasts, infographics, or video.

If you're standing on the contained foothills and looking up, the summit looks uncomfortably far away. And tall. And tip. And probably cold.

Lately, I've been advising people to try a new approach to climbing that mountain... And it starts with realizing that it's not a mountain at all.

There are plenty of recipes for success.

You can visualize the success of content like Mount Everest. There is a defined path to the top. It is very difficult to climb. You need equipment, know-how, elite-level conditioning, relatively good weather, a guide, and a bit of luck. Even then, you could die.

Or, you can visualize content success as making some soup.

Personally, truth be told, I feel much better about my ability to make some good soup than to climb Everest and possibly die.

One thing I like about the soup metaphor is that it recognizes that you can create something valuable out of whatever happens to be available to you.

If you have a great writing voice, barely any money, a few chunks of free time on the weekends, and a ton of hilarious stories, you can create a soup of interesting content out of that.

If you have a writing voice that isn't that strong, but you have the budget to hire an editor, you consistently have an hour a day to create content, and you have a lot of interesting people on your contact list, you can create a different content soup from that.

You don't have to master every element of content marketing right away.

But the more techniques and tactics you can be good at, the more types of soup you can make. And the more effective your content will tend to be.

Intro: The 30-Day Method Challenge

Anyone who uses Facebook is familiar with these - we decide to adopt some habit or pattern for 30 days and see what happens.

There are Nutrition Challenges, Fitness Challenges, Handwriting Challenges, Art Challenges. One of the best known, NaNoWriMo - a challenge to write an entire novel in the month of November - starts tomorrow.

So what kinds of things can you work on?

You may find that you can use this type of challenge to work on literally anything that is bothering you. Here are some ideas for your content or business:

Choose one of these to study and practice every day for 30 days:

most effective headlines
great first sentences
write the dialogue
quick stories
metaphors
Translating features into benefits
Brainstorm lists of blog post ideas

Or maybe you'd like to take one consistent action every day for 30 days:

Reach out to a new blogger or publisher online.
Touch base with someone you haven't talked to in a while.
Spend time describing, in detail, a business process that you do all the time, which may have a wizard get hold of it.
You can take a walk, then immediately sit down and write for 20 minutes.
Go through a tutorial on the software that you have been meaning to learn forever.

I've found a lot of energy in doing something every day, but if for some reason you really want a day off every week... It's your game. The regulations are established.

What about you?

Have you ever done a print challenge or another type of content challenge? Interested in coming up with a challenge of your own?

Great ideas are even better when shared... so let us know about your challenge ideas in the comments!