As part of the faculty development goals of the Office of Faculty Advancement and Leadership Development, the Pitt Writes Initiative was designed to foster a structured and supportive writing community at the University of Pittsburgh.
In collaboration with NCFDD—leveraging our institutional membership—this initiative provided faculty and scholars with a dedicated space for goal setting, peer accountability, and writing productivity.
University of Pittsburgh 14-Day Writing Challenge
The University of Pittsburgh will partner once again with NCFDD to host a private 14-Day Writing Challenge.
The Spring 2026 Pitt Writes 14-Day Writing Challenge took place February 2-15, 2026.
Registration closed on January 25, 2026.
Don’t miss your chance to cultivate a productive writing routine and enjoy the process!
Important Dates
Kickoff Event
- Tuesday, January 20, 2026, noon–1 p.m., in-person
- The Kickoff Event introduces participants to the writing challenge and its alignment with faculty development.
- Only registered writing challenge participants are invited to the kickoff event.
14-Day-Writing Challenge
- Start Date: February 2, 2026
- End Date: February 15, 2026
About the Event
This open and free 14-day challenge, exclusive to the University of Pittsburgh, is designed to foster a vibrant community of scholarship by inspiring faculty members, graduate students, and postdocs at all career stages.
Along with a goal of increasing publications, reducing writing barriers, and creating accountability, we seek to build relationships and encourage collaboration during the challenge.
We also aim to support faculty and career development and create an engaging, supportive environment for academic writing—while also having fun!
The inaugural PittWrites program launched with a private 14-day writing challenge that took place February 3-16, 2025 (read a recap of the Spring and Fall 2025 challenges).
Why join a 14-Day Writing Challenge?
The challenge gives you an opportunity to reconnect with your writing projects every weekday and build a consistent habit-making progress feels more achievable with just 30 minutes of daily writing.
This framework will help you stay focused and make significant headway on your manuscript, research paper, thesis, or any scholarly work.
The PittWrites challenge is open to all University of Pittsburgh scholars at all stages and supports a variety of scholarly tasks, including:
- Journal articles
- Conference papers
- Proposal statements
- Manuscripts
- Freewriting, outlining, editing, and revising
- Any other scholarly project that would benefit from consistent daily progress and community accountability.
For the purposes of this private 14-Day Writing Challenge, "writing" means any scholarly activity ranging from following the spark of a new idea, to taking notes on articles, to polishing a near-complete project—article, grant proposal, exhibit, book chapter, etc. Anything that occurs between a great new idea and a completed scholarly project is included.
How does it work?
The 14-Day Writing Challenges will be hosted in the NCFDD's WriteNow portal.
The challenges are designed to encourage faculty, grad students and postdocs to engage with their scholarly work in some way for at least 30 minutes every weekday throughout the challenge to develop a sustainable daily habit.
As part of the challenge, you will:
- Commit to writing for at least 30 minutes Monday-Friday for two weeks.
- Log in to the WriteNow online community, start the timer, complete your writing, and post your progress.
- Spend 5 minutes supporting other writers by commenting on their progress.
Writing isn’t just about putting words on paper—it’s about advancing your scholarly work in any form, from brainstorming new ideas to polishing a near-final draft.
According to NCFDD, the average participant writes for 350 minutes over the two-week period, and 98% of recent participants found the challenge helpful in making progress on their scholarly work.
See the Spring and Fall 2025 Writing Challenge recaps for Pitt participants' statistics.
This program is offered in partnership with:
