The Pre-Writing Challenge Wrap Up: It's Only Just Begun

It’s over and it’s just begun!  The official month of pre-writing ended last night at 11:59pm and it’s been an exciting time.  It’s been incredible to see everyone working harder than normal, re-evaluating their work process, and building relationships with each other.

If you are not a writer, I hope that having the challenge hosted on Conscious Me has still been an interesting read for you.  There will be more to come on the challenge for a little while yet, but then it will all be moving to its own domain and Conscious Me will return to a more singular focus on personal development.  It has been a significant source of personal development for me, which I will be discussing in detail in a future post (you can read a teaser for it in my challenge update below).  Thank you for reading, and please look forward to that post.

Now that’s we’re officially done (besides Ralph and Heather who joined late and are taking some extra time to meet their goals) we’re moving forward into some very cool things.

Pre-Writing Challenge Experience Posts (Upcoming)

Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be featuring guest posts from Aaron, Antti, Bert, & Justin, talking about their experience with the Pre-Writing Challenge.  These posts will give you a preview of some of what we intend to provide in the upcoming e-book.  Additionally, some of the other challengers will also be writing posts on their own experiences and included teasers in their updates below.

I’m not the only one featuring other challengers on my site.  Over the next several weeks, David Doolin is doing a spotlight on each of the challengers.  He has already done a piece with Antti Kokkonen, Eleanor Edwards, and Heather Craik and has several more to come.

Pre-Writing Challenge Guidebook

As mentioned above, all of us are working on writing content for an e-book that I’ll be putting together over the coming weeks.  It will provide a lot of excellent help for writers who wish to take part in future Pre-Writing Challenges, or even just increase their writing productivity on their own.

The current challenge is over, but we’re nowhere near finished.

The Blog Maintenance Challenge

In a couple weeks David Doolin will be running his own challenge, continuing where this one has left off.  Check out what he had to say about it:

Some of these same kooks are going to roll right into the next challenge: Blog Maintenance Month. We’re going to systematically work our way through a host of annoying blog chores for 4 weeks. Stuff like:

* Fixing SEO metadata. For our entire blogs.
* Checking broken links.
* Fixing image SEO alts tags.
* Internal linking to tie articles together.
* More. Much, much more. I misplaced my list, but it doesn’t matter, more information is coming.

If, on the vanishingly remote chance you want in, watch for details in a week or two. It will be committing, and it helps to be slightly crazed to even consider attempting it.

If you have a blog, or are considering it, Doolin’s site Website In A Weekend is one you should read religiously, and dig deep into his archives for all his amazing content on how to build, and maintain a site. The Blog Maintenance Month is going to be pure gold, sign up for Doolin’s Weekender newsletter to make sure you don’t miss out.

Final Updates

Carlos Velez – Conscious Me

The last week of the challenge was both the week that I wrote the least, and the week that I learned the most. In week 3 I realized the inadequacies of my work-flow and created structure and processes to improve my writing process.  I went to Oklahoma for the weekend to hang out with Aaron Pogue and some other friends, comfortable in the fact that I had my next week’s posts already finalized and scheduled to be published.  It’s a good thing too because I needed to do something else this week.  I needed to spend some time with my wife.

She’s been dealing with a lot of intense changes and life experiences over the past few weeks and I’ve had my nose stuck in a laptop almost constantly.  I accomplished a lot this month, but at the expense of the connection between my wife and I.  This week I learned about priorities.

I got some much needed rest, spent time listening to (finally) and connecting with my wife.  Then I was even able to get some work done on the Pre-Writing Challenge.  I finished up a couple more posts and have ended the challenge 1 post shy of my goal.  I do have several posts in a half-written state, however.  Between the posts I’ve finished and the upcoming guest posts, I have the next 3 weeks worth of posts pretty much figured out and scheduled.

My upcoming post on the Pre-Writing Challenge Experience:

The Pre-Writing Life-Changing ExperienceThe challenge lasted 1 month, but for me the experience has been much longer. Between the set up and the wrap up, I’ve taken in 2 months of experience now and it’s not stopping yet. The biggest surprise about what I’ve taken away from this event and from managing is that it has little to do with pre-writing. I ended the challenge with a much better system for writing, and scheduling posts ahead of time and it will serve my blogging career very well. But more than that, I ended the challenge a much better man. It had a big impact on my personal development and on the direction of my life’s work. It was a pretty big deal.

I look forward to sharing the experience with you in this upcoming post. It will run in a couple of weeks, after the 4 guest post slots I have lined up detailing the Pre-Writing Challenge experience.

Thanks for sticking with us this past month. I hope all you writers out there will stay in touch so you can join us for round 2 .

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Eleanor Edwards – Give A Brick

It’s been a mental seven days here in sunny South Wales. So much so, it was with much disgust at myself that I emailed Carlos on Monday to warn him that unless a miracle happened, I was going to fail this challenge. His reply was poetic. He said, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you’re not going to fail, you’re just not finishing in the way your over inflated ego would have liked you to finish! Now tell me more about what’s been happening and I’ll help.”

OK, so I’m para-phrasing But he was lovely and it made me feel much better. It also gave me a boost to get as much done as I possibly could. That said, at the time of writing (6am, Saturday), I’m still nowhere near completing the 28 posts I said I was going to pre-write. I have learned loads through this experience though, much of which will have an impact on my future publishing rate and methods. You’ll have to wait until I publish my post-challenge analysis to find out more about that

So a brief round up of my week: BMyCharity went belly-up, I rounded up the troops as a solution was found, BMyCharity were rescued and the troops stood down, published a video, wished my youngest younger brother a very happy birthday, started my own business, enjoyed my first ever interview, caught a cold, wished my oldest younger brother happy birthday, slept!

My upcoming post on the Pre-Writing Challenge Experience:

Finishing Strong: Challenge Complete?

I woke at a little after 4am Saturday morning coughing because of a dry, tickly throat. First thought: I need to get up and get some water, maybe I could stay up and get some writing done? My poor body has been pushed beyond all recognition these last three weeks as I gently tease and coerce it to function well on less than average sleep. It’s done me proud though and whilst you know already that I probably won’t have completed the challenge in the way was first intended, skip over to my place on Wednesday and you can find out the true extent of the damage.

I’ll be publishing that final round up at 10am GMT on Wednesday March 24th 2010.

Final thoughts? I’ll leave that to Ferris Bueller, he’s far better with words than me

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Have a great week and thanks for sticking with me,

Eleanor

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Heather Craik – The 3D Student

Slow going for me, though due to my messing with the rules severely I still have another few weeks to make my progress! Wrote my first guest post yesterday; it’s over at Website in a Weekend. Otherwise I’m hoping to make up my progress over the weekend and during Spring Break. Experience post to come, though probably not quite yet; I’ll keep you posted.

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Ralph Carlson – Ralph Carlson Blog

Just finishing week three and entering the homestretch for my final week while the rest of the crew is crossing the finish line. My original plan was to have one month worth of material after four weeks. It doesn’t look like I will make that but the experience has been fantastic anyway.

My upcoming post on the Pre-Writing Challenge Experience:

Lessons from Stepping Up: The Pre-Writing Challenge

The experience is turning out differently from my expectations. When I wrap up next week I will be summing it all up. Even more than my own experience, I hope to learn from the rest of the participants final thoughts.

Hang Tough!

Ralph

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Aaron Pogue – Unstressed Syllables

I won!

My Experience with the Conscious Me Pre-Writing Challenge

I got it done on Wednesday, and that turned out to be really good thing. You wouldn’t believe the weekend I’ve had. Now I’ve got to get writing again just to keep that buffer there, but I’ve also got about a thousand other projects to get back to! Should be an interesting spring.

You can find my thoughts about weeks 1-3 of the Pre-Writing Challenge here. I’ll update that post with week 4 (and some final thoughts) sometime tomorrow. Watch for it!

Thanks for all the support and encouragement!

Aaron

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Justin Matthews, Catharsis of the Bogue

Week 4, The Challenge is Over!

Okay folks the challenge is over. How did I do? Well I didn’t quite finish the whole challenge. I was close. I have 7 of 10 posts ready to publish at a moments notice. One thing that should be taken into account is the fact that I actually used 4 posts from the challenge to fill my daily queue. I still am planning on finishing 3 more posts to hold onto so I have the 2 weeks worth of posts available.
So why didn’t I finish? Well that was me and laziness. I started off strong, with pages, post titles and promotion, and then proceeded to squander the first 2 1/2 weeks with thin excuses and only a bit of writing. I really needed to have my posts better scheduled out and not just go at it as it comes. This challenge was awesome and I learned a bunch about myself and my blog and how to work with some other people out there in Blogistan.

I hope you guys all had as much fun as I did. I can’t wait to hone the process and get the next challenge going even better than this one!

Thanks Carlos and thanks to everyone who participated!

Sincerely,
Justin Matthews!

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Bert Padilla – Cebu Tech Blogger

As I’ve said last week, I still have to draft nine articles- eight for the pre-writing challenge and one for Conscious Me. I’m done with the remaining articles for the pre-writing challenge, but still need to proofread those before publishing. I’m still working on my guest post for Conscious Me. Finally, the challenge is over for creating stash of articles. The series of blog posts will be published on a daily basis starting this Wednesday.  That will be very interesting…Opps, one more thing…I will write about my experience with the Pre-writing challenge, too. I’ll publish it tomorrow…

My upcoming post on the Pre-Writing Challenge Experience:

The Pre-writing Challenge is Finally Over

You might have heard about the pre-writing challenge initiated by Carlos Velez. If you had been a regular reader of every participant’s blog, there’s no way you can’t hear about it. The challenge is finally over. Everyone of us have drafted several articles. That was a great challenge, indeed. Thus, I’ll blog about my personal experience about the challenge. In this way, you will be able to learn also how I managed to write a stash of posts to be published daily, in a span of twenty days starting this Wednesday. I’m more excited about it, actually…

Visit my blog tomorrow, Tuesday, as I’m going to publish it there.

Regards and more power to blogging!

-Bert Padilla

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Deacon – Bad Deacon Design

Update. Final update, I should say. Luckily, I have something to report. Overall, this challenge managed to line up right with a period of being incredibly busy at my day job. I didn’t have much time to keep up with my normal work, even less so the extra work from this challenge

That said, at the end of this challenge, I have 4 posts in draft mode, ready to post. Tags, titles, SEO descriptions and all of that good stuff are done. I just have to hit publish. I have another 3 posts saved as drafts that need a little more work. A few of them require me to make figures and add images, and I just haven’t gotten to that yet.

In addition, 2 of the completed posts are the first 2 in a series of 5. I know the content of the next 3 posts, I just haven’t had time to write them. These 5 posts will be pillar content, or something close to it, once I finish them.

I’m sure I will be writing a post about this this week, probably something like the following:

Rocked by the Pre-Writing Challenge – How much I wanted to do, and how much I actually did.

-Deacon

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Megan Potter – Limitless Living

Here’s the thing, I don’t work on the weekend. It’s not my rule, it’s my husband’s rule; when yo work from home it’s overwhelmingly tempting to work all the time – especially when you love what you do. Limitless Living is my day job, which means no working at night (as a general rule) or on the weekends. So, all it took was one off week and… I’m a bit behind. I didn’t manage to get to 15 posts as I had hoped when I wrote the last update – only 13. Which means, as of Friday I was three posts short of my goal, and I don’t work on the weekend. I will accomplish my target, it just truns out that I’ll be two days behind: 18 posts will be accomplished by the end of the workday today. Overall, I’m pretty happy with the results; what do you all think?

My upcoming post on the Pre-Writing Challenge Experience:

The Story of the Tortoise and the Hare

The problem with the Hare is that things started out so well he got complacent. He thought to himself (well, herself in my case), “I’m already a thrid of the way there (through the work) this will be a breeze.” And then, of course, life comes along…

My goal (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) is to get the overview up at some point during this week. It will probably go live Thursday or Friday.

Yours,
Megan

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Conscious Me is now on Facebook.
Visit the new page and add me as your friend!

Thanks,
Carlos

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Related posts:

1. Pre-Writing Challenge Updates: Week 3 + E-Book And Future Event
2. About The Pre-Writing Challenge: This Will Greatly Benefit You Bloggers
3. Pre-Writing Challenge Updates: Week 2 + Darren Rowse Message To Challenge Participants
4. Antti Kokkonen (Guest Post): Decisions & Destiny, The Pre-Writing Challenge Experience
5. Aaron Pogue (Guest Post): My Experience with the Conscious Me Pre-Writing Challenge