Join Our April 2018 Daily Writing Challenge

Want to work on developing your daily writing habit? Come join our free daily writing challenge, because forming new creative habits is more fun when done with a community of like-minded writers and artists.

You are invited to join our April 2018 daily writing challenge, hosted on Instagram.

Daily, use the prompt of the day to inspire and fuel your writing practice. Maybe the prompt will be a warmup, or help you through a sticky spot in your novel, or the spark for a new poem.

It doesn't matter, and whatever you choose to write is great. The point is just to write, and then keep writing, everyday.

If you'd like to join in on the communal aspect of the writing challenge on social media, be sure to tag your related posts with #sheofthewildwrites.

And if you are looking to take it a step further and do this challenge with a writing, we've got you covered there, too -- come join our free writing community on Facebook.

Are you ready? We start tomorrow, April 1st!

When In Doubt, Go On the Adventure

I bought the ticket on a whim, just a few weeks before departure. After dreaming of a trip to England for most of my life, I saw an opening, felt the chill of winter at the back of the wardrobe, and ran after it.

I like to know things. I like to know what is coming next. But I also cherish the unknown, the mystery of how a whole universe spins around us every day. I crave adventure.

At first, in the days after my ticket purchase, I felt like a badass. Like a woman who takes charge of her own damn destiny. But of course that quickly gave way to fear (we'll come back to that in a minute).

And then a conversation with a new friend, in which I found myself making excuses for my passions and how I haven't been pursuing them. I am made to write, I said, sipping at a pint of Porter, but there's no time.

There's always time, though. And also never time. We only have now, and in the now, we have all the time we need.

I bought the ticket because I'm thirty-five years old and if not now, when? I never believed I was immortal, but lived as if I had no end. There was always plenty of time, endless time, until, like the rest of us, I learned the hard way that that's not the case.

Life ends and begins in a moment, and if I have the time and the willingness and the dream to do a thing, a thing that brings joy and that challenges and delights and grows the self -- why am I not doing it now? Why am I waiting for tomorrow, which may never come?

I bought the ticket.

I haven't begun writing again (unless you count this post), but I feel the words calling.

I am afraid.

Afraid that the flesh and blood adventure I'm taking, the trip that has turned into something of a pilgrimage, won't stand up to the one I've dreamed of for decades. That I'll be crippled by anxiety or laid low by depression (these fears are not unfounded). Afraid that the words will come out stilted and broken, that they don't matter, that nothing matters in the end.

I am writing this from the airport, where the unknown stories of the travelers traipsing, the different skin tones, the slow dance of the planes outside both soothe and excite me.

I am here, taking the first steps of the adventure. I am writing, perhaps stilted, perhaps broken.

In the end, I will have gone on the trip and returned. I will have picked up the proverbial pen and used it. I will not have to wonder "what if," and although the fear is real, my gut says that even if this is all that these ventures give me, it will be enough.

Join Our January 2018 Daily Writing Challenge

It's the new year, and we all have creative goals that we're planning on crushing. So let's do it together, and make it more fun!

You are invited to join our January 2018 daily writing challenge, hosted on Instagram.

Daily, use the prompt of the day to inspire and fuel your writing practice. Maybe the prompt will be a warmup, or help you through a sticky spot in your novel, or the spark for a new poem.

It doesn't matter, and whatever you choose to right is great. The point is just to write, and then keep writing, everyday.

If you'd like to join in on the communal aspect of the writing challenge on social media, be sure to tag your related posts with #sheofthewildwrites.

And if you are looking to take it a step further and do this challenge with a writing, we've got you covered there, too -- come join our free writing community on Facebook.

Are you ready? We start tomorrow!