The One-a-day Reading Challenge for Writers

Writers Supporting Writers is What It's All About

Image: Andrej Lišakov via Unsplash+

Writers! Gosh, you people inspire me. I knew I wanted to be a writer when I was elementary school. It was second grade, I took home 3rd place in a creative writing contest, and since then I never remotely thought about being anything else.

Fast forward more years than I’d like to admit, and these days that’s exactly what I’m doing! I’m publishing articles, short stories, poems, working on a novel, an animated series, a couple podcasts and…

Wait a second, what am I doing? This post isn’t about me. It’s about you! All of you, in the writing community. You who inspire me to keep going. You, who give me amazing feedback and push me to improve my craft.

For all of you, I want to extend a very sincere “thank you.” And a challenge. I have a challenge for you.

But First…One More Shout-out to The Writing Community

Just a few of the amazing posts I’ve seen from fellow writers this week.

Any given day, I’m on BlueSky, Substack, Threads, and sometimes Instagram. I know, it’s a problem, but I’ve discovered something amazing:

Supporting other writers gets me excited to write!

Not only that, but all the positivity and encouragement is intoxicating. This is what social media is supposed to be, but it wasn’t until recent years that I ever experienced it.

Normally, when I think of social media, I think of arguing, toxic trolls, negativity, and the like. That’s not the case with the writing community. No, I have yet to have a negative experience since I’ve trained my algorithms to show me nothing but my fellow writers.

Which got me thinking…

I Have a Challenge for You…

Do me a favor and think back to the last time you recieved a comment on your work. It can be short, long, positive, or some criticism meant to help you grow as a writer. Imagine how you felt in that moment.

Pretty good, right? Take this comment I recieved for a recent short story of mine, courtesy of Brianna Wheeler (who you should absolutely subscribe to here on Substack):

Wow, what a review! I’m not exaggerating when I say that comments like this make my night. Hell, they make my week! Until this moment, I had never really received a lot of feedback for that particular story (I published it on Vocal over a year ago and it never really got a lot of reads).

It probably didn’t take Brianna long to write this up either, but the impact was profound. Here’s another example (this one courtesy of Spencer D.W., who you should also subscribe to immediately), this one geared towards what I would consider extremely useful feedback:

Detailed, balanced, useful feedback. There’s nothing wrong with criticism when it’s delivered in a respectful way, and Spencer did exactly that with his review of my short story, “Widowmaker.” In fact, I told him I agree with all of his points!

So, where am I going with this? Well, I think we should all strive to try and read another writer’s work on a daily basis. Not only that, but I think we should leave a comment.

Tell them what you liked. Tell them what you think could be better. Encourage them to write more. Anything you like, becuase remember, no matter how big or small, that comment is going to mean the world to them.

How do I know?

Because they mean the world to me.

Ready to Take on the Challenge?

Image: Benoît Deschasaux

So, let’s recap. I want you, yes you, to find a piece of writing each day, read it, and leave a comment. That’s it! Depending on the work, it might take five minutes. Ten minutes for a short story (or twenty if you read some of my work).

The writing community is already incredibly supportive, but I think this challenge could help us grow even more. Not only as writers, but as people. If you decide to take on the challenge, let me know in the comments!

In the meantime, I’ll be out there every day, finding and supporting my fellow writers. Thanks for reading.