Thirty30k: Writing 30,000 Words in 28 Days (February, 2026)
What happens when you commit to writing 1000 words every day for a month?
February is here, and I've decided to do something that excites and terrifies me in equal measure. I'm participating in Thirty30k, a writing challenge where you commit to writing 30,000 words across the 28 days of February. That's roughly 1000 words per day, every day, no excuses.
Today was day one. I wrote 1350 words. I think that it was a good start.
What Is Thirty30k?
For those unfamiliar, Thirty30k is the shorter, more intense cousin of NaNoWriMo. Or rather, what was NaNoWriMo. The original organization shut down in early 2025 after a series of controversies involving their pro-AI stance and forum safety concerns, though community-led alternatives have since emerged. Where November's challenge asked for 50,000 words across 30 days, February's challenge recognizes that sometimes you need a shorter sprint rather than a marathon. The math works out to about 1,071 words per day if you want to hit exactly 30,000, but I'm rounding to 1000 as my daily minimum. Some days you overshoot. Some days you barely scrape by. The important thing is showing up.
The challenge isn't really about the word count. It's about building a daily writing habit. It's about proving to yourself that you can produce consistently, that the muse doesn't need to visit for you to do the work. It's about getting words on the page even when you don't feel inspired, especially when you don't feel inspired.
I've done challenges like this before. My Inktober experiment taught me that constraints breed creativity and that daily practice, even in small doses, compounds into something substantial. But this is different. This isn't 300 words building a children's book from prompts. This is 1000 words per day on a single project, a sustained push toward a specific goal.
The Project: The Well of Souls
I'm using this challenge to make serious progress on The Well of Souls, a fantasy novel I've been developing for longer than I care to admit. It's the kind of project that has consumed countless hours of worldbuilding and outlining but never quite achieved the momentum it deserves.
The premise is portal fantasy with a twist: when a lonely programmer dies unexpectedly, he wakes up in a world between worlds, the only soul who remembers his former life. As a creeping darkness threatens to consume everything, he must uncover why he alone is different and what role he's meant to play. It's a story about finding purpose where you least expect it, about what it means to be remembered, and about the strange comfort of being somewhere you don't quite belong. What I don't have is enough pages.
That changes this month.
The Well of Souls has been simmering on the back burner while I've worked on other projects. The children's book from Inktober. Short stories. Blog posts. All valuable work, all useful practice, but also convenient excuses to avoid the harder task of sustained novel writing. Thirty30k is my commitment to stop circling and start advancing.
Why 1000 Words?
There's something almost magical about the 1000-word mark. It's substantial enough to feel like real progress but achievable enough to fit into a busy day. At 1000 words, you're writing about four pages of manuscript. Do that for 28 days and you have 112 pages. That's not a complete novel, but it's a significant chunk of one.
More importantly, 1000 words forces you past the resistance phase. The first few hundred words of any writing session are often the hardest. Your inner critic is loudest, your doubts most persistent. But somewhere around word 500 or 600, something shifts. You stop thinking about writing and start actually writing. The voices quiet down. The story takes over.
1000 words ensures you reach that flow state every single day. You can't write 1000 words while still wrestling with whether you should be writing at all. By the time you hit four digits, you've already won that battle.
I've experimented with different daily targets over the years. 300 words is great for maintaining habit during difficult periods but doesn't generate enough momentum for a novel. 2000 words is ambitious and productive but difficult to sustain alongside a full-time job and family. 1000 words sits in the sweet spot: challenging enough to matter, achievable enough to maintain.
Day One: 1350 Words
Today I woke up knowing the challenge had begun. There's something clarifying about a public commitment. You can't quietly abandon a goal no one knew about. But when you've told people you're doing Thirty30k, when you've written a blog post about it, suddenly the stakes feel real.
While my kids were having their afternoon nap, I got to my desk. I opened my manuscript, read the last few paragraphs to get back into the voice, and then I started writing.
The scene I worked on today involves my protagonists really getting to know each other. It's atmospheric work, heavy on setting and mood, the kind of writing that either flows beautifully or fights you every step of the way. Today it flowed. The words came faster than expected, each sentence pulling the next one behind it.
I hit 1000 words and kept going. Not because I had to, but because stopping felt wrong. The scene wanted to be finished, or at least brought to a natural resting point. By the time I looked up, I had 1350 words and a completed chapter section.
That's 350 words in the bank for a harder day. Because harder days will come. They always do.
The Strategy
I'm approaching this challenge with a few key principles.
Write first, edit never. At least not during February. The goal is forward progress, not polished prose. Every minute spent revising yesterday's work is a minute stolen from today's new words. I'll have March for editing. February is for creation.
Protect the time. Writing 1000 words requires about an hour of focused work, sometimes less if the scene is clear, sometimes more if I'm working through a difficult passage. That hour has to be non-negotiable. It goes on the calendar like any other appointment. The world will try to steal it. I won't let it.
Trust the outline. I have a detailed chapter-by-chapter breakdown of The Well of Souls. During Thirty30k, I'm not going to second-guess it. If the outline says this scene comes next, this scene comes next. Revising the plan mid-challenge is a form of procrastination disguised as productivity.
Track everything. I'm keeping a simple spreadsheet with daily word counts. There's something motivating about watching numbers accumulate, about seeing the gap between current total and 30,000 shrink day by day. The tracking also helps identify patterns. Maybe I write better in the morning. Maybe Tuesdays are consistently difficult. Data reveals truths that intuition misses.
What I Hope to Learn
Every writing challenge teaches you something about yourself. Inktober taught me that constraints spark creativity and that discovery writing can produce surprisingly coherent results. Building ChatDM taught me that randomness is underrated and that AI can be a genuine creative collaborator.
I expect Thirty30k to teach me something about endurance.
Writing a novel isn't a sprint. It's not even really a marathon. It's more like a long hike across varied terrain. Some days you're climbing. Some days you're walking easy trails. Some days you're slogging through mud and wondering why you ever thought this was a good idea. The only way to finish is to keep walking.
I also hope to learn something about The Well of Souls itself. There are scenes I've outlined but never written, character moments I've imagined but never tested on the page. Writing 28,000 or 30,000 words will force me to confront what works and what doesn't, what the story actually is versus what I've been telling myself it is.
Sometimes you don't really know your story until you write it.
Join Me?
If you're a writer looking for motivation, consider joining Thirty30k. February is short, the goal is achievable, and there's something powerful about knowing other people are grinding through the same challenge at the same time. We're all staring at blank pages together, all fighting the same resistance, all celebrating the same small victories.
I'll be posting updates throughout the month. The good days and the bad days. The breakthroughs and the struggles. Because that's what writing actually looks like: not a smooth arc of inspiration but a messy, inconsistent, stubbornly persistent practice.
Day one is done. 1350 words. Twenty-seven days to go.
Let's see what happens.
Are you participating in Thirty30k or any other writing challenge this month? I'd love to hear about your projects and progress. Find me on Instagram and let's encourage each other through February!