Why you should try a 30-day writing challenge (Issa Writes 028)

You'll find more time than you knew you had

Greetings, fellow writers!

As you may have heard, I recently wrapped up 30 threads in 30 days on X/Twitter. I did a brief intro to threads and why I took on the challenge on Wednesday.

But today’s newsletter is more personal:

I want to talk about what I learned during the thread writing process…

This is a tiny fragment of the FULL case study I’m sending out in a few weeks. If you’re subscribed to this newsletter, you’ll get it when it drops.

But if you’re reading this on Substack or a forwarded email and aren’t subscribed, you’ll miss out.

Hit the button below to get it when it drops:

I set out on this 30-day experiment for one big reason:

To build my audience on X more.

For some context, I decided to do the threads because I had good luck with threads before I got pregnant with my daughter last year—before the nausea and the fatigue and all of that fun stuff destroyed my momentum as though I’d run into a tripwire.

(And if it needs to be said, the sacrifice was 100% worth it. My daughter is pure joy!)

I wanted to regain that magic. So I decided to do it:

30 threads in 30 days, one thread a day.

I knew it would going to be challenging because threads take work. I believed the work would pay off in audience growth.

But that didn’t happen.

30 days of slogging, and I gained 54 followers.

Paltry compared to the the 200+ followers I got from one viral thread last year.

But the experiment taught me ONE thing I want to dive into first…

The Lesson

I’ve been open about struggles with building an audience as a new mom.

I’m juggling full time work, building a brand—and trying to be a good mom and wife.

On top of that, I have a few minor health concerns I’m addressing, and one of my immediate family members is facing a major health struggle.

Suffice to say it’s a lot.

The pressure of the challenge forced me to carve out an hour (plus) a day to work on threads. Mornings became a scramble to get each one done and dusted (and posted) as quickly as I could after taking care of my daughter.

But I found the time.

And now that I don’t have a challenge forcing me to crank out content, my writing has taken another dip.

So I'm bullish on the idea of short-term challenges like writing 30 threads in 30 days.

They’ll show you that you can do it, that you can use these little sprints of work to help you meet your writing goals.

So the key takeaway is this:

I did it.

I can do it.

You can do it.

We can do it together.

Two Questions

With that said, I want to throw out two questions for you:

My Next Challenge

I am brainstorming additional 30-day challenges and would love your input on what you’d like to see me tackle next:

• X/Twitter Comments: 30 comments a day for 30 days, contrasted with 30 threads in 30 days to see which leads to better audience growth.

• Substack Notes: 3 Notes and 13 comments on Substack a day to grow this newsletter.

• Substack Posts: One newsletter post sent every day for 30 days to grow this newsletter. These would probably be short writing or story breakdowns.

• Novel Edits: Finish a round of edits of my novel in 30 days. My novel is currently sitting about 53,000 words, and I need to bump it up to about 70,000. So I’d need to add 15,000 to 20,000 in 30 days.

Vote Below:

Want to join me?

Within the next few months, I’m considering bringing some readers along for a 30-day writing challenge. TBD on what the challenge will be, but let me know if that's of interest at all.

I’m imaging a small group who’d all be working on the same writing challenge together, likely with weekly check-ins and some kind of forum to post questions and offer support.

If you are interested, please reply to this email or comment below let me know what you might be interested in seeing.

Until next time,

N.J.

P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to this newsletter (if you aren’t already!) to get the full case study when it drops.

The full case study will show you how I wrote threads, how I came up with ideas, and how the threads did.

I'm looking at a lot of data:

• Type of thread

• Hook

• Time posted

• Images

• First tweet impressions

• Second tweet impressions

…and many more.

P.P.S. When I wrapped up my 30 threads in 30 days experiment, I had 560 unread emails. I had to tackle them one by one.

The first newsletter I read was The Write Way by James Carran.

Carran’s work is a direct inspiration for me. If you like my writing philosophy and lessons, if you write for the sake of writing, if you love words, you’ll love The Write Way.

Subscribe here: https://www.getpaidwrite.com/subscribe?ref=yeW0EHy9bs

Full disclosure: this is my referral link. The Write Way is entirely free, but James is kindly offering special bonus content for people who refer others to his newsletter.

If you sign up with my link, send me a DM here or on X, and I’ll edit 500 words for you as a thank you to help make your writing sharper. It’s a double win for you!