Take the ROW80 Pledge for Round 1 2013

2012 is closing its doors and 2013 is just around the corner (or might already be here, depending on when you’re seeing this).  Maybe you accomplished what you wanted last year.  Maybe you didn’t.  Either way, let A Round of Words in 80 Days help you meet your goals for THIS year.  Take the pledge and sign up for Round 1 to get your writing year off to a bang up start.

There’s no need to state your goals yet.  Be thinking about those over the next week and have them ready to post on starting day: January 7th.  For now, just link to your blog (yes you must have one, see the FAQs for why).  If you’re new to the neighborhood, take a gander at the basics about what ROW80 actually IS.  And meet back here bright and early Monday morning the 7th to kick off the new year.

Note: If you’re stumbling across this after January 7th the linky is closed.  That doesn’t mean you can’t jump in!  Simply refresh the page and go to the most recent linky, where you’ll link to a blog post stating your goals for this round.

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

Round 4: STATE YOUR INTENT

So Round 4 begins on OCTOBER 1st, wherein you will write up a post stating your goals and link to it on that day’s linky.  But folks always get excited and twitchy once a round ends and want to be able to DECLARE THEIR INTENTIONS.  Hence this post and linky.

So if you plan to participate in Round 4 of A Round of Words in 80 Days, link to your blog below.  There’s no need to state your goals yet (unless you just really wanna).  And if you do, you’ll still want to link to that post on the official start date linky so that folks can travel around and visit you.  And if it’s actually October 1st or later by the time you read this, this linky will be closed, so you should navigate to the next chronological post and link to your goals post there.

If you are a newbie, please check out the FAQs and note that you should be posting progress reports, etc. ON YOUR OWN BLOG and then linking to that specific post in the linky for that check-in.   They don’t go in the comments section.

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list…

State Your Intent! Round 3

Round 2 is complete and we’ve all had a break.  Now’s the time to STATE YOUR INTENTIONS of joining up for Round 3.  Now some folks choose to do goals with this post, though we will have an official State Your Goals linky on July 2, starting day.  If you do state your goals, feel free to link back to this same post when Round 2 begins.  But generally folks often just link directly to their main blog at this point so people can hop around and visit to see who their compatriots will be for the next 80 days.

Report back here on JULY 2nd for the official start of Round 3!

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list of other intrepid ROWers…

Sign Up For Round 2!

Sign ups are NOW OPEN for Round 2!  Now, as I say elsewhere, if you happen to find us after the official start day (April 2nd), feel free to jump on in.  For now, you’re just declaring your intentions to join us.  There will be an official START DAY linky where you will link to your specific goals post.  For now, just link directly do your blog in the linky below (that would be the thing that says “CLICK HERE”), not in comments.  Yep, if you want to participate you have to have a blog.  See the FAQs.  And come hang out with us on the #ROW80 stream in Twitter.  The veterans will help you newbies learn the ropes!

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list of other ROW80 participants…

Sign Up For Round 1 of 2012!

It’s almost time!  Four more days until the start of Round 1, our first official round of 2012!  Wahoo!  Here’s where you declare your intentions to join the round (though you’ll be making a separate goals post for January 2nd, our official start date).  Just paste in the link to your blog in the linky below, grab the ROW80 badge (copy image location and then chuck it into your blog’s image widget or use some handy dandy html image code in a text widget).  Then meet back here on the 2nd ready to GO GO GO GO for the new year!

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list of other intrepid ROWers…

Round 4 Sign Up

We are opening the doors!  It’s time to sign up for Round 4 of A Round of Words in 80 Days.  Now this is NOT the linky where you post your goals.  That one will go up October 3rd when Round 4 officially begins.  At this point just drop the main link to your blog.  If you’re not sure how all this works, please check out this post.  Be sure to spread the word to your other writer pals!  And come hang out with us on Twitter at the #ROW80 hashtag!

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list of other fearless ROW80 participants!

A Round of Words In 80 Days: Sign Up For ROUND 3

I can hardly believe that Round 2 is over.  But it is.  You can read about the awesome here.  And now it is time to sign up for A Round of Words in 80 Days: Round 3! 

If you are NEW to ROW80, WELCOME!  If you wandered over and are wondering what the heck ROW80 IS, please allow me to enlighten you.  The uber details About post describing where ROW80 came from and why I started it is here, but here’s the short version:

A Round of Words in 80 Days is exactly what it sounds like.  It is a writing challenge that runs for 80 days.

How is it different from other writing challenges?

Well apart from being longer than most writing challenges (NaNoWriMo being the one most folks are familiar with), ROW80 allows YOU to set YOUR GOAL (You’ll wanna read this post about what constitutes an actual measurable GOAL).  We don’t presuppose that everybody has the same needs, the same level of productivity, or the same schedule.  When the challenge starts, you might be in the middle of a WIP.  Or you might be on revisions.  Everybody’s different.  You take whatever project you are working on, in whatever stage it is in, and you figure out a goal for it, share it with us in a blog post that you link to when the challenge begins, and you join our community of dedicated writers and fellow cheerleaders.  Don’t feel limited to fiction.  We’ve had non-fiction writers on here as well as one participant who was working on her dissertation!

And here’s the clincher about what makes ROW80 different from all the other writing challenges out there: We recognize that you have a life.  It’s all well and good to think that you can put your job and family and responsibilities on hold for a month or more to hammer out a book, but it’s not realistic.  Hundreds of thousands of people start NaNo and only a fraction actually SUCCEED.  Because life happens.  It gets in the way.  And real writers have to find a way to cope with it and STILL GET THE WORK DONE.  So in light of the fact that we know you have a life, ROW80 allows you to change your goal should you need to. 

And since we all want to (presumably) be writers rather than hobbyists, we need a challenge that happens more than once a year.  A Round of Words in 80 Days happens FOUR times a year.

Round 3 begins on July 4th.

Image via Wikipedia

If you intend to participate, add your blog to the linky below.  Do you have to have a blog?  Yes.  Here’s why.  We’ve got a whole 10 days until the round begins, so feel free to just link to your main blog here.  Your GOAL POST will be made on the actual starting day, which is, again, July 4th.

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list of other ROW80 participants…

Done?  Great.  Now grab your official ROW80 badge from the sidebar there to show your ROW80 pride and don’t forget to TELL YOUR OTHER WRITER FRIENDS.

See you on the 4th!

Round 2 Sign up!

By popular demand (and how awesome is that?), I am going ahead and posting the sign up linky for ROUND 2 of A Round of Words in 80 Days.  We BEGIN April 4th. The linky will be live until the first Wednesday check-in (the 6th).  Be sure to link to the post where you actually tell everybody what you hope to accomplish for this Round.  If you’re catching us after the start date, no worries.  Just leave your goal post on the next check in linky (we check in on Wednesdays and Sundays).

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list of other brave ROW80 participants…

And authors, I am STILL LOOKING FOR SPONSORS!  Your responsibilities as such would be to write an inspirational post and check in once a week with your team to leave supportive comments.  Email me at kaitnolanwriter(at)gmail(dot)com if you’re interested! I have GOT MY SPONSORS!  Thanks for all the volunteers!  I’ll be sending out relevant deets in a bit.

Sign Up for ROW80 Round 1

Now that I’ve explained what A Round of Words in 80 Days actually IS, I wanted to go ahead and give people a chance to sign up.  If you put your name on the list and decide not to play, that’s fine.  We’re not actually doing goal setting yet (because, really, who knows what will happen in the next 6 weeks–oh my holy crap, the end of the year is in 6 weeks!!!  I need to finish my Christmas shopping!).  I’ll create a new Linky on January 3rd where everyone will actually link directly to their goal post (Score!  Okay, I’ve had limited caffeine, forgive the bad pun).  For now, just give us your name and link to your blog.  And, you know, Tweet and Stumble This and all that jazz to let folks know.

Click here to enter your link and view the rest of the sign up list…

Meanwhile, I am still looking for author sponsors (indie or traditionally published), so if you’re interested, please drop me a line at kaitnolanwriter (at) gmail (dot) com.