Here's a new wrinkle that occurred during the 2022 challenge:
One day during last year’s challenge, someone emailed me to say that they were writing every day, they just didn’t feel comfortable submitting things and asked if that was OK.
Absolutely.
Now, if you want to be part of the competition to write every day and get a payout at the end, then you DO need to submit something every day by the deadline - even if it’s just the fake little placeholder play I send every day at the end of the challenge post/email.
But the “competitive/money payout at the end” part of the November playwriting challenge is the least important part. It’s just extra incentive if people need that to encourage them to keep at it.
If you don’t care about the payout at the end, then you can just write for yourself every day and not turn anything in. We’ll still send you the prompts to keep you going each day.
Someone else emailed me saying that what they were sending in they didn’t want to be public - not that I was going to make it public but it was the kind of writing that they’d probably have to redo down the line if it was ever going to see an audience. That could be a masking of identities thing, that could be an unpopular opinion thing, who knows? Doesn’t really matter.
Basically don’t feel weird about turning in writing. All it’s doing right now is going into a folder associated with the challenge on my computer (it’s not even on a shared Google drive for the theater company or anything).
It’s just so I can track the day to day of how many people are turning in writing and how many pages it all adds up to for a final rundown to show you all how impressive your output has been in the month of November.
And I’m scrambling to keep up with you all most days in the rush of it all so I don’t even have time to read anything either.
So it’s quite literally a judgement-free zone right now sending me an email with your writing.
If you don’t care about the payout at the end, if you don’t care about the “competitive” part of writing every day, if you’re not comfortable sending me pages, that’s absolutely fine.
The important thing is that you write.
That’s the main reason I started this, it’s the main reason I hope we’re all doing it, so you come out on the other end of November with the beginnings of new scripts to work on for the next 11 months until November of 2024.
(And it sounds like from the results of the first two years, that’s what a lot of you did get, which makes me very happy.)
The deadline and submission part of it is mostly just to give you a way to hold yourself accountable. There is a time at which a person is expecting to see some writing from you. So you write.
Do what you’re most comfortable with.
Don’t let anything get in the way of the daily writing.
We’re all good at finding excuses not to write (me very much included).
This is all about stripping those excuses away.
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And because we call can get in our own way so easily, here’s some other words of reassurance on the basics of the month ahead which we laid out last year:
Friendly Reminders - Answers To Common Questions:
(Follow the links to read me expounding on these items :)
Don’t Stress About Writing A Full Play
Don’t Stress About Format
Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt
No. Really. I Mean It. Don’t Stress About Sticking To The Writing Prompt
Don’t Stress About Finishing An Idea (You Can Add Later)
Don’t Stress About Thanksgiving
Don’t Stress About “Succeeding” or “Failing”
Don’t Forget To Vote: Tuesday, November 7th (or If You Can, By All Means Vote Early)
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