Happy Birthday to Us: The Sprint Shack Turns 2 Today!

Happy Sunday everyone—and happy birthday to us!

Today, The Sprint Shack turns two years old! It’s been an exciting and productive year, and we thought it’d be fun to get together and share a recap with you all. After all, this could be our last big celebration before we update our NaNoWriMo word counts to that glorious 50,000 on November 30^th and weep with overwhelming victory.

In case you haven’t seen, we’ve been sprinting on and off on our Twitter all day to celebrate (and we aren’t stopping yet)! But now we’d like to take a moment to recap some accomplishments from this past year, our own personal experiences blogging together, and each of our most popular posts.

The blog was a bit quieter this year as we all toiled away at our own projects, but we’ve accomplished a few exciting things since our last birthday. We added Mazie, our new contributor, who now blogs with us regularly. We hit 2,000 followers on Twitter and released a celebratory resource bundle. And, of course, we featured some amazing guest posters! Before we continue, take a look at these amazing posts and give a big thanks to their authors for contributing such awesome pieces:

Brigid Gallagher (YA Buccaneers) – Kill Your Distractions

Meredith Foster – How to Write in a Less-Than-Ideal Environment

Mazie Bishop (before she joined us as a contributor!) – Being A NaNoWriMo ML

Amy Good – “Story Bandit:” Stealing Your Writer’s Block With Random Prompts & Dares!

Grace Black – Poetry & Three Line Thursday Writing Competition

Amy Good & Karen Faris – Rewriting Mary Sue

Yvonne Spence – 1000 Voices Speak & The Power of Writing

These were some well-written, inspiring posts… and we’re honored to have hosted them!

We Just Wanted To Say…

Faye

It feels like it was only last month that we were launching the Sprint Shack and now we’re celebrating our second birthday. I can’t believe how fast that time’s gone! But it’s not that surprising, considering how much has happened in that time. The Sprint Shack has developed and branched into areas that we never thought it would when we first founded it, like self-publishing and freelancing. We also launched our first bundle for writers—the first of many to come! This next year is going to be very exciting for the Sprint Shack, let me tell you.

The past year has also been an incredible journey for me personally. I’ve moved on after graduating from university, run my own business and expanded my first e-course into an e-book, the Writember Workbook. Over the next year, I’m planning to release two more e-books for writers, plus whip my work-in-progress, Her Clockwork Heart, into readable shape. It’s all happening in 2016—and that’s not even going into what we have planned for the Sprint Shack! (Hint: it’s going to be epic, you guys.)

In short, keep watching this space.

Faye’s most popular article this year: How To Write 10,000 Words In A Day

Taylor

Two years? Already?! Wow. Happy two-year birthday to the Sprint Shack! It’s hard to believe we’ve been around that long already. To be honest, this site still feels very new. And in some ways, it is. We’re still working to come up with new ways to bring all our readers the best content we can. I can’t say too much, but we’ve got some exciting things planned for Year 3!

On a personal note, this past year has been a variety of writing successes and failures on my part (but that seems to be most years). As far as successes go: I’ve published two more collections of flash fiction (God Gave Me Butterfly Wings and Little Write Lies, Volume 1), plus continued to post two free flash fiction stories per week over at Little Write Lies. I’ve also started a successful series, Firewalkers, on Channillo, continue to be a monthly judge for Three Line Thursday, and have recently become an editor at 101 Words.

On the flip side, there have been weeks on end when I haven’t written at all. Projects I have been working on have been put on hold. My time spent word sprinting has dwindled down to almost nothing. And a new job has left me exhausted, with little to no energy left to write in the past couple months.

However, if there’s one thing that the Sprint Shack community has taught me over the last year, it’s that it is imperative to celebrate your successes and forgive yourself for your failures. I’m encouraged to keep writing by our wonderful readers and contributors, as well as my awesome co-founders. Here’s to another great year with the Sprint Shack!

Taylor’s most popular article this year: A Tiny Guide: Prioritizing Your Writing Time

Cristina

I’m not sure what I can say that Faye and Taylor haven’t already. Of course, I’m floored that it’s been two years already since we began writing, sprinting, and collaborating with each other to bring The Sprint Shack to life. I, too, look back on this year as a combination of failures and successes alike, but as Taylor said, I think that’s every year!

Receiving a promotion at my job last year led to an increase in writing responsibilities for my employer, so personal blogging and creative writing have shifted back and forth in priority over the past 12 months or so. In addition, I’ve embarked on a fitness journey of sorts, holding myself accountable to my weekly workouts and more active weekend plans like hiking, and my will power often runs out by the time I get to my writing as a result. I also found myself in a new relationship and with a new pet—a feisty and troublesome kitten! So, naturally, life has felt a bit hectic—and I’m a little disappointed about how infrequently I was able to post on The Sprint Shack, be present for regular sprinting events like #TNightSprints and #TuesAMSprints, and focus on my creative projects this year.

But while there were some disappointments, there were some amazing experiences as well! I got to help beta read Faye and Taylor’s works and watch their writing flourish, meet and work with Mazie as our new contributor, and this past summer, I got my own flash fiction piece “Petals to the Sea” published in The Great Noveling Adventure’s anthology Summer Nights!

As for the future, I’m excited to work with Faye and Taylor to put some of our exciting ideas for The Sprint Shack to life. I’ve been spending some more time with my fantasy WIP Fleeting and considering what to work on for NaNoWriMo, since I think spending some time in a new project would do my creativity well and give my excitement for writing the spark it needs after a tough year. I’m still not entirely sure where the next year will take me, but that’s what New Year’s Resolutions are for… and we aren’t there quite yet!

Cristina’s most popular article this year: The Story Arc: A Guide To Structuring A Smooth Story

Mazie

In the past year I have somehow managed to land a writing position with Sprint Shack, graduate with a degree in Journalism, and jump start my freelance career. My new year’s resolution was to write 1000 words a day, and for once in my life, I haven’t broken the chain yet. It has truly been a year full of big sprints and I can’t be more pleased about how it’s turned out.

Mazie’s most popular article this year: Setting Manageable Goals

---

So, where do we go from here?

We have some more plans for The Sprint Shack, the details of which are still under wraps… but keep an eye out for more content and bundles, a potential site overhaul, and new & improved sprinting schedules in the future!

Most importantly, thank you so much to our readers and followers for participating in sprints, reading The Sprint Shack, and chatting with us on Twitter. We love having such a wide community of writers to celebrate the craft with.

Here’s to another great year!