
First of all, what is Crazy Writing Week?
An excellent question. I am so glad you asked!
CWW is a Christian-based, week-long program run by a group of professional authors. It is designed for anyone in their teens all the way up to early twenties. The point? To write and learn a lot over a short period of time. Through a series of fun writing challenges, lessons on writing, and a welcoming community, CWW can provide some much-needed motivation and encouragement. It can also help you accomplish more in one week than you thought possible.
Fun Fact: CWW is run by the same team of people who are behind the Young Writer's Workshop. What's that? Oh. Guess I haven't told you much about YWW. Well! I see some new blog content to add somewhere in 2025. Yes, I definitely need to introduce YWW on the blog!
What's CWW like?
Crazy. The young writers registered are split into three teams. This year we had the Detectives, the Spies, and the Bystanders. The Bystanders were teens who preferred to participate more non-competitively. The Detectives and Spies were battling over which team could spend the most time writing, which team could get the most words down, and which team could earn the most achievements. Collectively, the three teams work together to pursue various prizes. This year, these included things like masterclass interviews with multiple published authors, a hilarious video of author Josiah DeGraaf reading his very first story aloud (complete with illustrations!), and more!
Achievements? Did someone say achievements?
Yes! There were two achievements you could earn for your team.
Write at least 1,000 words by the end of the competition. This earned your team a star. ⭐️
Watch the daily videos in the Young Writer Revolution video series* as well as comment on each daily video post. This earned your team a moon. 🌜
CWW is based in an online community where you can interact with many, many other young writers throughout the competition, as well as with your instructors. It is a very closely monitored, Christian-based, encouraging community that is a lot of fun to participate in.
Besides the two achievements, there were other things you could do to help your team earn more points. One of these things was sprinting, which you can read about under my "Did Crazy Writing Week Help You?" heading.
*If you are a young writer, I would highly recommend completing the Young Writer Revolution video series, which you can sign up for here. The videos are super encouraging, and you will learn a LOT. This video series is completely free, although consider yourself warned: after completing it, you may desperately want to join the Young Writer's Workshop, which does cost money. :)
Did Crazy Writing Week Help You?
It sure did! I had so much fun writing and learning alongside 2,000+ other young writers.
Yes, you read that number right. There were over 2,000 writers ages 13-25 participating in the same friendly writer's competition.
CWW is designed to help you make big progress on your writing in just one week. It says here that, "The average participant writes 4,000 words in one week." Of course, this is dependent upon how much effort and time you are willing to put in.
This January, I recorded writing 5,844 words for CWW.
I spent 8.78 recorded hours sprinting. This also translates to 527 minutes, or 31,620 seconds.
I made big progress on a new WIP, Dear Kasey, which you got a sneak peek at two weeks ago. This was partially (or maybe mostly) due to the writing sprints I completed.
If you are unfamiliar with what a writing sprint is, that's when you sit down, take note of the time, and write as much as you can until you have to stop and go do something else, or until you hit your predetermined end time.
You can also sprint by spending time learning about writing. The biggest, most important part of a sprint is making sure that you are solely focused on the right thing for the duration of the sprint. A sprint's main purpose is to help you stay on track. I found the sprints most helpful because I always posted my start and end times on the CWW community. Knowing that other people thought I was sprinting and focusing on my writing helped me stay on track. It gave me a sort of accountability that sprinting alone can't really provide.
Can I join CWW?
CWW is based out of an online community at crazywritingweek.com. CWW happens just once per year, and the community is closed except for the week or so in which CWW is running.
Join the Young Writer's Workshop mailing list so that you don't miss out when they announce next year's round of CWW. Remember, to participate, you must be in your teens or early twenties. You can read a bit more about CWW here, if you like.
Who knows? Maybe you and I will run into each other on CWW next year! If you decide to join, look for Lily P.
Fun Fact: Last May, the Young Writer's Workshop also ran a Crazy Editing Week, something I have yet to take part in. I am uncertain as to whether they are running that competition again or not, but you can read about it here!
Exciting Update on Three Feet of Trouble!
Hey ya'll! I am super excited to announce that I am getting wonderfully close to being ready to send Three Feet of Trouble out to a publisher!
I told myself, and maybe my email subscribers as well, that I was going to submit TFoT to a publisher before the end of January. It's the 27th, and I am deep in the messy depths of writing a query letter, a story synopsis, a summary of writing background, all sorts of things I have never written before.
Do you have any idea how overwhelming writing a query letter can be? Very.
I am very close to sending TFoT out. After that, it will likely be at least three months of waiting before I get an answer. Pray for me as I prepare and finalize my first manuscript submission and take this next step in my writing journey.
I will be blogging more about submitting TFoT soon. For now, I will just say that it is an exciting process, but it is terrifying in some ways too.
Until next time,
Lily