Welcome to the Blog Your Book in 30 Days Challenge 2019! #BYBin30

Blog Your Book in 30 Days is a challenge to write the first draft of your book by posting one chapter a day for an entire month. During the month of the challenge, helpful blog posts will be shared on the website.

The challenge is here to help you write the book you have always wanted to write but have never written. Whether you want to write a memoir, a fiction novel, a comic book, a children's chapter book or middle grade novel or a non-fiction book, this challenge is going to help you get it done. 

Every day, you are going to do any research that is needed for the day's writing and your are going to post a blog post of one chapter of your book. By the end of the month, you should have 30 chapters and a completed first draft.

This way of writing your books works best if you are planning to self-publish your book, but there are some instances where blogs have garnered the attention of agents and publishers and resulted in book deals. Those instances are the exception though, not the rule.


Rules:

Sign up. You will not be entered into the prize drawing unless you are signed up. Go here to sign up.

Every day, you are going to do any research that is needed for the day's writing and your are going to post a blog post of one chapter of your book. By the end of the month, you should have 30 chapters and a completed first draft.

You have from the first of the month until the 30th of the month to complete the first draft of your book. No starting early, unless it is only research and outline you are working on beforehand.

On the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th and 30th of the month, you will do a quick comment on that day's blog post posted on this blog about that week stating how the week has gone for you and anything you have learned or achieved from the challenge that week. Your comment might be quoted in the Blog Your Book in 30 Days book when it comes out or later in the blog itself and, by commenting, you are giving permission for your quote to be used.

Each day, you are to write one chapter and then copy and paste it into your day's blog post. By the end of the challenge, you should have a final word count. On the 30th, your comment will include your final word count and whether or not you have finished your first draft. Everyone who completes their first draft will be entered into a prize drawing. (The prize is yet to be determined.) Every time you leave a comment on (one comment per post) a blog post, you will earn one more entry into the drawing. Your comments on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th and 30th will earn you two entries into the drawing, and my favourite comment from each of those five days will earn an extra entry.


This challenge is self-driven and monitored. It is a way to keep yourself accountable as you write.

Amended Rules:

Alternate plan for traditional publishing #BYBin30

A few people have brought up the point that, if they choose to go the traditional route to publishing, having their entire book published on their blog may very well work against them in getting a book contract.

There are some optional ways of following this challenge, in those instances.

1. Write your one chapter every day, but only post on your blog about the writing, such as how much you wrote, what part of the story you were working on, what was easy about it, what was difficult about it, whether it stayed on plan or strayed from the original plot idea, etc.

2. Write your one chapter every day, but only post a small (one paragraph) excerpt from that day's writing as your blog post for the day.

3. Blog your book as per the original plan, but leave out important chapters, which will only be seen in the finished product. (This is a good idea even for those who plan on self-publishing.)

4. Don't blog your book at all, but use this challenge as the impetus to write a chapter a day anyway.

5. Blog about subjects related to your book or about topics your readers will enjoy reading about. (This is a great marketing technique.)

6. Do a 30 day promotional blogging adventure, with prizes and give-aways. Have your readers answer questions to previous books you've written in order to win prizes. Let them give you input on where they see you next book going or who their favorite characters are in your stories. There are many ways to make this month-long writing challenge a great marketing strategy for your book before it even becomes available.

I'm sure there are other ways to go about this and still be part of the Blog Your Book in 30 Days challenge, but these are a few ideas for you to consider.

Don't forget to follow the Blog Your Book in 30 Days Facebook page. (If enough people join the challenge, we'll create a Facebook group for discussing our books.)

You may also take a previously written book and use this challenge to edit the book, writing about the process each day in your blog.

And, if you don't want to blog at all, you can even just use this challenge as motivation to keep you writing and comment each day on the day's post, letting us know about your progress/word count/whatever.

Note: In the first year of the challenge (2014), I wrote a chapter a day on how to blog a book in 30 days. Feel free to read through those previous informative posts. (I also blogged a 30-story collection of mermaid-themed flash and short fiction as well as editing a non-fiction book - 28 day fitness challenge - that I wrote in the previous February.) In the second year of the challenge (2014), I added more chapters on how to blog your book in 30 days and also wrote stories for another anthology with different characters all set in the same world I had created. In the third year of the challenge (2015), I added more chapters on how to blog your book in 30 days, but did not post daily. In 2016 and 2017, I did the same, and I skipped running the challenge entirely in 2018. But this year, 2019, I'm back. I will be posting more informally through this year's challenge, all about the romance set in a fantasy world that I am writing. I hope you are ready to join me again this month! Let's do this!