I’ve tried doing fanfiction writing challenges before. And I usually fail. Spectacularly.
In years previous, I’ve tried taking part in the 100Fanfic challenge over on LiveJournal (now a dead or mostly dead community), 1sentence (also dead LiveJournal community), and one that I set for myself (write a SRMT fic a day leading up to its release on Disney+). It’s not very pretty. The only thing that ever saw success was the twelve fics that came out of the 1sentence challenge. If you’re curious, you have fifty prompts and write a sentence for each prompt. Everything is focused around a pairing. It’s also one of the only things I still get kudos for on AO3.
In essence, I don’t do writing challenges anymore.
However. In October, a bunch of writers on AO3 did a challenge called Whumptober. 31 days of prompts, one a day. And a bunch of those fics were in The Old Guard fandom.
And I started thinking.
I wanted to really get back into writing in 2021. Thanks to the lovely pandemic, my writing enthusiasm has basically dropped to zero. But for some reason, I wanted to take part. I almost jumped into Whumptober, but by the time the itch hit me, it was already almost halfway through the month.
So I waited, figuring I’d have to just nick the prompts and do it myself. Until I saw someone on Tumblr promoting Febuwhump. It’s the exact same thing, just with 28 prompts, one a day in Febuwhump.
So. On February 1st, I started.
As of writing this post, I’ve written one a day for nine days. I’ve fought through insomnia and food poisoning to get each one done on time. I also am only working on each one on the day it is to be posted, instead of writing ahead (which is totally fine if you ever want to!).
I’m only writing in the Old Guard fandom, along side four other people.
If you’re curious about this challenge, here is where you can get the prompts and all the info about the challenge.
As for where to read my own stories, hop on over to my Archive of Our Own profile, or even into the series I set up here.
I’ll check in at the end of the month with my (hopefully) completed table of stories.
I will say one more thing. Some of the prompts are very dark and trippy. I’m trying to focus on the sad-then-happier type of stories, because I want some happiness. Others out there just head straight into sad-no-please-ville and don’t come back.
But, to each their own. Happy writing!
Until next time!
