A National Writing Week? For Picture Books? Sign Me Up!

So, this is apparently a thing. I had no idea until yesterday. For years now I've done NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) as a way to focus myself and get first drafts out of my head and onto paper - or Word - and eliminate excuses as to why I haven't completed anything. From doing NaNo and Camp NaNo, I've managed to finish four novels and make good headway on several others. It's a great kick in the butt, mostly because I'm highly competitive and hate to lose, even if it's only bragging rights. Hey, I use what works.

Now this interesting 'competition' comes across my Twitter feed. Similar to NaNo or National Poetry Month, this one is aimed at picture book writers. And it's only a week. Easy peasy. Well, at least I think so right now. Here's the catch: National Picture Book Writing Week challenges you to write a new picture book every day for that week. Again, not a big deal, right? I mean, it's fewer words per day than NaNo since picture books only run between 0-1000 words. Shouldn't be a problem.

But, I do have a slight fear. Small, really. What if I run out of ideas? Sure when I'm writing a full-length novel I might run into road blocks and write myself into a corner, but I have a general idea of what I'm doing each day. With this challenge, each day will literally be a blank slate. All new characters, story lines and situations to come up with. New problems to present themselves and become resolved all in a short time span and then it's on to the next one. Will I be able to come up with that many ideas, one right after another? I have no idea, but I'm willing to find out.

Next week, when I embark on this new journey, I'll be posting here daily with the results of the previous day. I won't post entire stories, but I will share synopses with you all. And I'll tell you when the muse just wouldn't show. At the end of the week, I'll let you all vote on which story sounds the most interesting and that will be the one I focus on for my next project. I'm counting on you guys to help me decide since I anticipate them all being awesome. (Ok, I may be a bit optimistic.)

If you want to join me in this endeavor, you can check out all the details here on Paula Yoo's blog. Let me know if you're doing it and we can celebrate together when we have seven brand new, bright and shiny stories waiting to be released on the world.