ROW80 Goals

So, I’ve been generally aware of A Round of Words in 80 Days for a while. Billing itself as a writing challenge for those who have a life, you’re supposed to set a writing goal and regularly check in, so there’s a level of accountability. It runs fours times a year.

So, Kit, you say, why are you doing ROW80?

Well, squiders, you may remember that around Nano I was waffling about whether or not to participate, since I was working on marketing for Shards‘ release. And I did eventually decide not to play, for my own sanity, and I do think that was the right decision. And, at the time, my good friends Siri Paulson and Erin Zarro were going through the same dilemma (although not, obviously, because of Shards marketing).

So, having all decided that Nano wasn’t going to work for us, we agreed to do a writing challenge slightly later. Say, the beginning of 2014. And it just happened to line up with ROW80 and ROW80 would work for our goals, so here we are.

You’re required to have a blog for the challenge (check) and post your goals (working on, obviously) there. I’ve been kind of ditzing about looking at other people’s goal posts, and they’re really complicated. Multiple projects, multiple steps, writing and editing and researching, oh my. Maybe I going to be doing this wrong. But you know me, squiders. I think having one main and one side project at a time is the best way to roll.

And so, for the first round of ROW80 of 2014, my goal is:

• Write 50,000 words in the third book of the Ri’shan Trilogy

Tada! That’s it. A single project. It breaks down to a little less than 700 words a day, which is totally doable provided I get my act together, which was not yesterday and may not be today if I don’t get on it.

I mean, sure, I have other writing goals, but they’re little things like working on my serial or submitting short stories. Don’t really seem like they’re worth sticking in the challenge when I’m totally going to do them anyway.

How’s your 2014 thus far, squiders? Any new goals or challenges you’re trying? (Aside from this, I am also doing a 6 day a week, 6 week boot camp challenge at the gym. I am two days in and I both love and hate it.)