I am in the process of creating a writing challenge for myself. This will be a series of 10 posts each with an objective – a lot like the 10 speeches of the toastmasters manual – identifying different elements of writing and working on mastering them. Keep an eye out on this space … and you, my reader are welcome to participate too. It could be in the form of feedback, your own post to meet with the stated objective of any post …

Challenge #1:
This is a straight take from the Toastmaster’s manual. It is an ice-breaker, an introduction of myself which shall not be less than 500 words nor exceed 1000 words.

 I have just completed Challenge # 1. The title of my post is – “Finding my writing voice”. It is a brief introduction into why I want to blog, why I chose toastmaster as the name of this blog and finally how I plan to give shape to my aspiration of becoming a professional speaker. It is a short essay of only 669 words – so while I have words to spare – I don’t have any to pen. On to Challenge #2.

 Challenge # 2:

This is to be a 500 to 1000 word essay and my objective will be to organize my thoughts and not ramble on.

This was a tough exercise but I managed around 560 words.
One of the important lessons for me has been – 1 page in  MS word at 12 pt Times New Roman is approximately 500 words. I have to plan on writing atleast 2 pages to reach my word limit of a 1000 words … hopefully by the time I pen my next challenge.