500 words every day for 30 days challenge? #500WED Writing Challenge.

A few weeks ago, I received advertising on Lift for a #500WED writing challenge.

Have you heard of Lift? It’s this handy app I use for habit building. Supposedly, it’s been scientifically proven that to build a habit, you need to repeat the activity for 21 days, so Lift reminds you of your goals and tracks your progress toward whatever habit you are trying to build. Ex: “call your mom every day”, or “eat your vegetables”, although those two could easily be combined into a single thing with my mother… but I digress.

The ad says that a gal named Cecily Kellogg (at a time had no idea who that was) is promising to make me into a world-class NY Times best-selling writer who loves writing, by writing 500 words every day.

“Ready to a build this habit? Join and check in any day you meet your goal. Write 500 Words Every Day (#500WED). This is a community challenge to fall in love with writing again. Can you write 500 Words Every Day for a month? This challenge was conceived by Cecily Kellogg at UpperCase Woman and Esther Crawford @ Lift . To help kick things off, Cecily will be sharing daily writing prompts in the Q&A.“

Well, in my head I heard my version when I read it and since this is my blog, I’ll stick with that.

I am thinking, “Man I love writing, I write all the time!” Although in truth, those last 2 statements are more aspirational, I don’t write, I can’t write and I hate writing, that’s more of a real story.

Since English wasn’t my first language, and I missed all of the English grammar and composition classes in school, excusably due to being absent out of the country at a time, I struggle with writing. The condition is not hopeless, I have been seen to click the Like button and write a meaningful “Wow” comment, but not more than that?

While I feel I manage conversational English well, mostly due to my indifference to how I assault my listener ears with grammar and vocabulary when it comes to writing it…, and having someone read it…  Nah, that’s too scary, exposing, and humiliating!

What happened next is unclear. I know my first mistake was not deleting the email ad right away, because I kept coming back and talking myself into it, on how I should really learn to write better, how embarrassing it is to admit that it is 2014 and I still don’t have a blog and believe me in my line of work, that’s like barefoot cobbler embarrassing, so Shh, and all of that is because I have not practiced enough and don’t know how to write well.

I can’t tell for sure if it was the wine or the overdeveloped earning for learning and challenging myself to be better, but in a temporary lack of judgment, I decided to commit to this challenge. “Ok Cecily, you UPPER CASE WOMAN you, bring it on, let’s love writing till it hurts 🙂 “

In further lapses of judgment, I posted this message along with writing done for this challenge onto this personal blog to magnify the impact of learning.

PS. Written as part of the #500WED writing challenge Day 4 assignment.