For years I have given myself writing prompts to crush writer’s block and unleash my creative muse. I would regularly choose 10 random words, then force myself to create a cohesive, creative short story that effectively tied all the words together. It was the perfect left-brain, right-brain activity to jumpstart my urge to write.

Concurrently, Copyblogger started and I read it religiously, especially liking the writing style of Sean Platt.

These three elements came together like magic with the following comment left on a Copyblogger guest post by a guy named Dave:

I need specific, practical exercises to get past my current plateau. I’m considering taking a creative writing class. Since I’m in the San Francisco Bay area, it should be easy to find something appropriate… now to find the time.

There was obviously a need for a quick, creative outlet to sharpen people’s writing. I put two and two together and came up with three… three Cs that is, or the Creative Copy Challenge.

I had the concept and name, but needed partners to carry it out. I had taken Jon Morrow’s Partnering Profits course and knew from Copyblogger the power of partnering with other Third Tribe folks, so I contacted Sean Platt and David Wright about the concept.

The simplicity of the concept, combined with the minimal effort required on the back end, convinced these overly busy entrepreneurs to jump on the idea. Within two days we had a kick-bleep site up and running. As we like to say on the CCC, it was the Awesome Sauce.

For the first challenge, we thought it would be cool if more than three people contributed (excluding family and friends). To our surprise, our site got more comments than some bloggers get after years of brain-busting content creation.

Mind you; most of the credit for this idea goes to the mechanics of the writing process itself, not genius on our part. Several major problems plague writers:

1. Finding a creative concept alone can feel difficult and daunting.
2. Writers work in isolation, without a sense of community.
3. Getting published is the primary measure of skill that writers obsess over.
4. Getting published most often takes years.

The Creative Copy Challenge solves all of these.

Want to be creative? The CCC allows you to do so, but establishes logical right brain parameters to constrain your hesitant, creative left brain from over-thinking itself into blockage.

Want to join a like-minded group of super-supportive fellow writers? The CCC has you covered there as well.

Want to prove your skill as a writer? Not only can you prove how good you are, other writer’s will brag on you in the comments for everyone else to see, too.

Want instant writing credibility among fellow writers? The average Creative Copy Challenge takes about 10 minutes to complete; you’ll wait maybe one day instead of two years to see if what you wrote creates a hungry audience eager for more.

Yet, even the simplest ideas, ones that audiences are dying for, need to reach that audience. Enter Twitter.

Anybody wishing to have a site go viral as the CCC has would be wise to open up a browser, go to search.twitter.com, punch in the search terms that relate to their site, follow the people who express the interest which their site meets, and interact with these people. I’ve done exactly this and the only way I can describe how successful it’s been is to tell people to look at our comment numbers.

It’s also hard for me to describe exactly what goes on during the completion of a challenge that makes it so effective and so cool. It’s equally hard for me to describe the vibe that I’m getting from the community about this brain child.

All I can say is something magical is in the air about this thing. Something writers are hungry for is wrapped up in these challenges, something that they just don’t get from an increasingly complex, elusive, and isolated publishing world.

Sometimes it’s better not knowing why something works and just roll with it. And that’s exactly what we’re doing… 10 random words at a time.

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