April Writing Challenges

If you’re looking for a new writing challenge in April, here are a few to consider:

NaPoWriMo, National Poetry Writing Month, offers a daily prompt as well as links to several more poems and poetry resources that may inspire.

Amy Ludwig VanderWater at The Poem Farm announces a theme for her annual 31-day poetry projects. This year, she is composing one short first person, free verse poem each day that will be one part of a longer story, and she invites writers to join her “in writing a collection of 30 poems that tell a story.” I love the idea of incorporating Amy’s project in a classroom, since she includes a recording of her reading the poem, other visuals related to the poem, and process notes and tips.

Irene Latham at Live Your Poem invites writers to join her ARTSPEAK project: this year, her theme is happy poems. Irene always connects her April poetry projects with art and shares an inspirational piece of art as well as the poem she wrote from it. This year, Irene is including a video of herself reading the poem.

Christie Wyman, Mary Lee Hahn, Margaret Simon, and Jone Rush MacCulloch invite writers to join them for #playwithpoetryNPM, a 31-day poem project dedicated to Playing with Poetry using paint chips, haikubes, magnetic poetry, and metaphor dice. I absolutely was NOT going to participate in #NaPoWriMo until I saw Christie’s post this morning and thought how much I want to write a poem inspired by paint chips too! And next thing you know, I’m ordering haikubes and metaphor dice too! (Also, there is an actual Paint Chip Poetry Game that you can buy, but I plan to raid my local Ace Hardware this morning.)

If poetry isn’t your thing, consider the A to Z Blog Challenge. Yes, you write a post each day inspired by a letter of the alphabet, but your theme can be flexible. A glance at the sign-up sheet showed many bloggers writing fiction and poetry. There are plenty of bookish themes as well as photography, teaching, knitting, even road signs. Anything goes, as long as it starts with that day’s letter.

For even more flexibility, consider CampNaNoWriMo. Writers design their own writing projects (fiction, poetry, nonfiction, what have you), create their own goals and schedule, and write.

The 100 Day Project isn’t a writing project, but I still think it might be appealing (and I can think of plenty of ways to combine it with writing). For this project, you pick something artistic that you want to repeat every day for 100 days. There is a lively online community and a lot of gorgeous projects to view on Instagram (#The100DayProject), plus a helpful newsletter.