Between Independence Day and the time the tree leaves begin to turn, George Slade — and thousands of others — will write more than four dozen songs.

Slade, 27, is taking the 50/90 Challenge, which dares people to write 50 songs between July 4 and Oct. 1. At the end of last year’s challenge, Slade had written 62.

“When you get in an environment with all these musicians, it’s more motivating,” he said.

A group of songwriters and wannabes started the challenge as a Yahoo group years ago. They e-mailed their songs to each other and sent comments and critiques back and forth. Last year, FAWM.org began hosting 50/90 on its free Web site.

FAWM.org is a like-minded organization based around February Album Writing Month, which challenged participants to write 14 songs in 28 days.

“Most people in here are addicted to music,” Slade said. “They try to find challenges to do all year long.”

The challenge calls for “music professionals, students, homemakers and folks who work day-jobs but rock nightclubs,” as posted on the Web site. Participants come from all over the world, most in places such as California, New York and Wisconsin.

Nancy Rost is a songwriter and pianist from Madison, Wis., the hometown of one of FAWM’s founders. She has been a FAWM-er since 2006 and got involved in 50/90 when it joined the Web site last year.

“I pretty much now almost exclusively write during the challenges, because I get into a groove (and) it’s harder on my own without the community to kind of help me get into that groove,” Rost said. “There’s some mutual accountability, which makes it work a lot better.”

Songwriters taking the challenges can create full songs or they can limit themselves to instrumentals or lyrics. Many participants strive to do basic, unrefined songs that they can return to and master after the challenge. Some come out of the challenge with far fewer than 50 songs — Billy Sea, from San Diego, Calif., had about 120 by the end of 50/90 last year.

“The crowd there is just overly nice to you so you build up your confidence,” Sea said. “You see these amazingly talented people putting out demos that sound like they should be on the radio, and they’re giving me a, ‘Hey, good job.’”

Slade, Rost and Sea said the best part of the challenge is the community, what Slade called “one of the most polite sites I’ve ever been on.”

“As a songwriter and just getting involved in this community, the first day of the first year was terrifying until I jumped in,” Sea said. “And then once that happened, the community just embraced anybody who came in.”

As participants put together lyrics, rhythms or beats, they can post them to the Web site and get tips and feedback from fellow songwriters. Many collaborate without ever meeting face to face. People can post lyrics or a beat alone, and may have several versions of the song come back from others who added their own rhythm or words.

“It’ll motivate you to do music that you never thought you could do or would never do,” Slade said.

Most of Slade’s music is hip- hop, a genre he said he never would have considered before doing 50/90. Now a seasoned songwriter, he tinkers with FL Studio and Adobe Audition in his basement-turned-studio and makes songs about everything from his daughter, who’s due to be born next month, to a commentary on Mississippi.

“I try to tell a story — a story worth telling,” he said. “I want people to remember the song.”

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Contact Andrea Vasquez at avasquez@vicksburgpost.com