My Thoughts on Art Challenges (InkTober and NaNoWriMo)
In which I talk about the positive and negative aspects of art challenge. Then I explain how I like to participate in them and offer tips to people considering joining art challenges.
As October approaches, I’m deciding if I’ll participate in my two favourite art challenges: InkTober and NaNoWriMo! My first NaNoWriMo was in 2010 and my first InkTober was in 2016. After a decade of experience wrestling with the positive and the negative sides of art challenges, I thought it might be fun to share what I’ve learned.

I’ve participated in a variety of changes throughout the years, but here I’ll focus on the two I have the most experience with, NaNoWriMo and InkTober. So, here is a super quick definition and history of those events!



NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month):
This challenge takes place in November and the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in a month. This means participants must write at least 1,667 words per day to achieve the goal. The challenge emphasises a love of writing, getting a first draft on the page, and building a consistent writing habit. Participants are encouraged to take a ‘write first edit later’ approach to novel writing.
The event started with an in person writing group in 1999 and it’s website launched in 2000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Novel_Writing_Month). It is now a non-profit with many related programs. (Note: I will not be discussing whatever controversy is currently top of mind about NaNoWriMo.)
InkTober:
This challenge takes place in October and the goal is produce and share a different inked picture every day in October. There is an official prompt list, but there is also a healthy tradition of alternative prompt lists. According to the official website (www.inktober.com) following the official prompt list isn’t required.
This event started in 2009 and is traditionally an Instagram event. In 2009 Jake Parker started posting ink drawings every day in October on his Instagram as a personal challenge. It grew organically and the first official prompt list was posted in 2016 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Parker). Although Parker has a registered trademark for InkTober, it isn’t an independent organisation.
The Positive:
One of the things I love most about monthly challenges is how they make a hobby or medium more accessible to new comers. I had dabbled with writing before 2010, but I didn’t write my first complete novel until I participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time. The challenge gave me the structure I needed to see a novel through to the end.
These challenges also introduce an artist to something important, community. Artists have been finding each other in real life forever, but the internet takes this instinct to a whole new level. I have participated with in person writing groups and they are invaluable, but the last writing group I was in had about ten members each writing in a different genre. There were aspects of writing that we could help each other with, but online I can chat about world building a culture on a planet in orbit around a twin star system and how that would impact religious development differently in polar regions vs equatorial regions with fellow science fiction writers. A conversation with that level of depth in a genre niche is just not as productive with writers who don’t write in that same genre Challenges gather artists together and help them find each other in the vastness of the internet.
One of the most celebrated aspects of these challenges is the discipline they encourage. Writing a novel in a month is hard! Inking a drawing every day is hard! Participating in a challenge pushes an artist and shows them how much they can actually accomplish. Both NaNoWriMo and InkTober explicitly highlight developing discipline as a key target for the challenges. The structure of these challenges are great training wheels for new artist trying to learn how to make time in their schedules for creative pursuits.
The Negative:
I find that for all their benefits, these challenges can also present problems. One that I struggle with is that they can encourage bad habits. InkTober in particular is heavily social media focused. This is very helpful for developing community and getting to know other artists, but it can also make the art world feel as though it only exists online. For me, as much as I love InkTober, it can enforce a bad habit in me of focusing too heavily on social media. In part, this is down to different goals. The founder of InkTober, Jake Parker, is an industry artist. Part of his goal is to grow his social media presence. The problem for me, is that I am not an industry artist. I am a hobbyist. And focusing too heavily on social media can lead to burn out and frustration.



Another issue I’ve found with these challenges is that they emphasise one phase in the creative process. In the example of NaNoWriMo, the challenge focuses on writing the first draft of a novel. It is fantastic for getting that first draft onto the page, but it can leave participants asking, ‘now what?’ when the challenge is over. It is difficult to maintain the momentum of NaNoWriMo in other phases of writing that often require the writer to slow down and take a more critical view of their work. NaNoWriMo has tried to address this with programs through the years, but, in my opinion, the entity of NaNoWriMo is not suited to answering the ‘now what?’ question. Editing is just not something that can be done, for me, in a race against the clock.



Finally I find it difficult to maintain community that exists in challenge months throughout the year. NaNoWriMo is silo-ed on it’s own website with its own forums. This is fantastic during November. The dedicated forums are a great place to meet fellow writers and chat about writing. I think this is also an artefact of the program’s age. It started before the launch of Twitter or Facebook. If it was going to have a place to chat, it had to host it’s own forums. The problem is the NaNoWriMo forums are a ghost town outside of November. Efforts have been made to expand the sense of community to Twitter, the traditional social media home of writers. I’ve found slightly better luck maintaining the community feel of NaNoWriMo on Reddit. Still, the community built in NaNoWriMo all too often disintegrates at the end of November. Although InkTober exists on Instagram and is therefor a bit easier to maintain connections made through the event, a similar dissolution of community is felt as the hastag dies at the end of the month.
How I Approach Art Challenges:
As mentioned previously, one of the sources of friction for me with the challenges is when my goals do not align with the creators’. So, when deciding if I want to participate in the challenge. I ask myself why, then adjust the challenge to suite my goals. In the past I used alternative prompt lists for InkTober or used different word count goals for NaNoWriMo. Most years I start NaNoWriMo early and finish early to fit it in around my other obligations. It’s important to remember that these challenges exist as personal challenges to serve us as artists. Break the rules isn’t cheating; it’s simply adapting the challenge to better serve us.



For example, this year I plan to participate in both InkTober and NaNoWriMo. I will be following the official InkTober prompts and my drawings will be themed around world building for my NaNoWriMo story idea. I also will not be posting them on Instagram. That platform is consistently bad for me creatively and I am not trying to grow there. I’ll post them here, but I won’t post every day, just the ones I’m most excited about. I will also probably set my word count goal for NaNoWriMo to 40,000 words rather than 50,000 because the idea I’m working on would be better suited to a novella.
My Advice:
Remember, these challenges exist to serve you. Don’t hesitate to tailor them to fit you
Look out for what works and what doesn’t work and make a plan to bring what works into your regular routine. If you want to maintain the community, figure out where that community lives for the other 11 months of the year
Don’t worry about ‘failing’ the challenge. If you have to quit a challenge half way through the month, it’s not a failure. It’s only a failure if you fail to learn something
Use art challenges to try something new. The structure helps focus a new commer’s efforts and the community around the events can pool a lot of resources in one place that are usually scattered around the internet and difficult to find.
Have fun!
I love the idea of both inktober and nanowrimo but I always fail at the execution. First of all, every single day job I've had is the BUSIEST around October/november. That sets me up for failure from the start. Now as for nanowrimo - it's just doesn't mesh with my process. I'm a planner. I plan out my writing from the big plot points, to scenes, and only when I know where I'm going I sit down to write. Freewriting is a useful warm up exercise for me but I wouldn't attempt a novel that way, because trying to cut out anything useful out of a 50k word diarrhea just doesn't seem like a good use of my time.
Inktober is more achievable, but no matter how 'simple' I promise myself to keep it I can never make it simple and quick enough to produce 30 drawings in 30 days. I have two unfinished Inktobers that I'm slowly finishing and even though I promise myself I won't embark on the third one, I surely will. I can already see it - mini gouache paintings. Tiny and simple, I promise.