My friend Suzie has to write 30,000 words of a novel in August for her MA dissertation. Now, I’ve been procrastinating about starting a new novel, and as accountability and the support of other people are huge motivators I said I’d commit to doing the same. I can’t let her beat me, can I? We aren’t the only writers in need of a bit of support though, so we wanted to let other people (that’s you!) join in too. So that’s what we’re doing.

 

It’s super-simple and free.

 

  • Before starting you need to know what your project is and set a word-count target for August. We’re suggesting 30,000 but it’s up to you. Divide this by 30 for your daily target (you’ll have a surprise day off in the middle).

 

  • I’ll run the month on the Urban Writers Retreat Facebook page by posting a status update daily that you will respond to. On the first day you’ll tell us what you’re writing and what your targets are. If you prefer Twitter I’ll post it there too – I’m @urbanwriters and we’ll use the hashtag #writeorama.

 

  • Staple bum to chair and write until done. If you’re easily distracted, I suggest turning your internet off at night then writing as soon as you wake up in the morning.

 

  • Each day, post your progress under my daily post on Facebook or using #writeorama on Twitter like this: target:1000 actual:1090 total:3970. Feel free to post elsewhere on the page and make friends!

 

  • Then pat yourself on the back and have a nice cup of tea. Biscuits are allowed – I’ll have a chocolate hobnob, ta. Suzie, rather controversially, prefers a Jaffa Cake.

 

There will be singing. And silly hats. We might set you photo challenges. We’ll almost certainly dance on our chairs to bad 80s music. And we’ll write. 30,000 words. Bring it on…

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