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Reflections on the 30-Day Creative Challenge
No More NaNoWriMo, but You Can Still Challenge Yourself
Holly Lyn Walrath
August 21, 2026
Sponsored by
Creative Challenges Are a Way to Find Your Voice
This month, I’m once again teaching my popular “30 Stories in 30 Days” workshop. I run this one every summer, and I also run a similar one each January that focuses on genre (currently on sale!). The 30 Stories workshop is geared specifically toward flash fiction writers, and each daily prompt explores a different short story structure. I created this workshop because I realized that while novels have many resources for story structure, short stories have very few. In the class, we try out structures like the triptych or slippery slope.
In the first week, it just so happened that almost all the students chose to share their triptych stories for critique. This is a structure with three parts: usually a beginning, middle, and end. I give my students the prompt below:
Write a story with a clear beginning, middle, and end. Denote these sections in some obvious way and write them as fragments. You can number them or use subheadings to title them.
They marveled at how, although they each chose the same prompt, they all approached it differently. Some flipped the script, making the beginning the first fragment. Others expanded the story into a four-act structure with four fragments.
This is what’s fascinating about creative challenges. It’s my teaching philosophy that no two students are alike because no two creatives are alike—we all have different backgrounds and interests that show up in our work. There’s something special about creating to a deadline, working daily to meet a goal. Everyone approaches a challenge differently.
30 Genres in 30 Days
DATE: 4 Weeks Starting January 4, 2027
LOCATION: Online via Writing Workshops Dallas
Get ready to discover the magic of different genres in this fun and interactive 30-day workshop tailored for short story writers. Whether you’re into mystery, romance, horror, or science fiction, this workshop will help you grasp the unique elements and essentials of each genre. With 30 engaging prompts, you’ll master how to seamlessly blend popular genre traditions into your stories, no matter if you usually write microfiction, flash fiction, or short stories. This workshop is the perfect opportunity for fiction writers aiming to enhance their craft by gaining a deeper understanding of genres.
Structuring Projects Around the 30-Day Challenge
In January, I’ll be a part of the MATCH Houston Mix-Match festival. It’s a Houston fine arts festival that focuses on interdisciplinary arts. For my project, I’ll be printing iconic texts important to Houston’s history onto fabric, then painting over them to erase them.
For me, this constitutes a creative challenge. I haven’t seen the space allotted to me yet, but my plan is to make about ten large-scale fabric artworks. Ten works in about six months doesn’t seem that hard, right? It feels like a lifetime to me, someone who is used to much shorter timelines. It’s downright leisurely. The caveat? I’ve never worked with textiles before. So that in itself is a challenge!
Challenging myself with tight deadlines has always been part of my creative practice, though. My first-ever art exhibition took place on Sabine Street in Sawyer Yards. The gallery there is essentially one long hallway. I was chosen as the first artist to exhibit there, and as a result, I had the least amount of time to prepare. That means that I had to make about 20-30 new large-scale erasure paintings in about 30 days. (You can see this project on my Instagram if you scroll back far enough.)
Even before that, though, I was doing 30-day challenges. I was a NaNoWriMo-er (National Novel Writing Month, where you write a novel in a month) for a while, and I did NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Month, where you write 30 poems in 30 days).
I found that creating in short bursts really worked for me. Some months, I don’t have the capacity to work daily. So by shortening my practice to just 30 days of hard work, I can really achieve a lot. And for poetry, it just so happens that most chapbooks are around 30 pages of poetry. So if you want to write a book, you can get a starting draft down in 30 days if you push yourself.
Community: Where for art thou?
One thing I loved about the Mix-Match festival process is that it was a peer-reviewed artist call. That means that I read a ton of the other artists’ submissions and got to see how everyone approached the call differently.
In my 30-day workshops, my students often build a miniature community that holds for those four weeks, then dissipates after. This kind of pop-up creative community is really valuable. I was reminded of that this weekend when I went to a local print shop to attend a printmaking workshop. Workshops exist for a short period—sometimes just an hour or two. In that time, we encourage each other and create together. How much you get out of the experience depends on how much you put into it.
Doing a creative challenge in community is a great way to make friends and connections. But with the recent closure of NaNoWriMo (full story at LitHub), I think it’s important to note that you don’t have to have a class or other people to do a creative challenge. You can make one up. You can decide how many days or how many years you want it to be. You can decide if it isn’t working for you.
Whenever a community disbands, there’s always the possibility for new ones to pop up. But here’s the rub: sometimes YOU have to be the community. So I encourage you to start up your own challenges and share them with your friends. Be the type of person you would want to create with!
In the end, there’s no wrong or right way to create.
Upcoming Workshops from Your Host with the Most Writing Prompts, Holly Lyn Walrath
 Sip + Create Goth Night  Journaling for Writers  30 Genres in 30 Days Get ready to discover the magic of different genres in this fun and interactive 30-day workshop tailored for short story writers. Whether you’re into mystery, romance, horror, or science fiction, this workshop will help you grasp the unique elements and essentials of each genre. With 30 engaging prompts, you’ll master how to seamlessly blend popular genre traditions into your stories, no matter if you usually write microfiction, flash fiction, or short stories. This workshop is the perfect opportunity for fiction writers aiming to enhance their craft by gaining a deeper understanding of genres. |  Sip + Create Van Gogh's Sunflowers  Writing the Book-Length Poetry Collection This online poetry workshop is built for new and emerging poets ready to gather their work into a cohesive manuscript. Open to all levels and all genres of poetry, it's ideal for writers who have poems on the page but feel overwhelmed by the task of shaping them into a chapbook or full-length book. By the end of this online writing class, you'll have the skills to move from a folder of individual poems toward a publishable manuscript — and a clear understanding of how to submit and market your book of poetry.  Sip + Create Fifth Ward Art Walk  Sip + Create Holiday Cards Join us for a cozy holiday card-making sesh where you can explore your creative side and make your own poetry-themed holiday cards. In this creative session, we'll use books and texts from the December cultural holidays — Christmas, Bodhi Day, Hanukkah, Diwali, and Kwanzaa—to write poems and create our own holiday cards. Learn about the world's holidays, enjoy a cozy holiday beverage, and meet other creatives. |
Self-Paced Workshops (Sign Up Anytime!)
 Self-Paced Course: 30 Poems In 30 Days  Self-Paced Course: Journaling for Poets |  Self-Paced Course: Queer Poetics  Self-Paced Course: Writing Resistance Through Erasure, Found Text & Visual Poetry |
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