WriMoProg Home

 ~ Scroll about half-way down the page to find the blue linky-face where you can first join, then find anyone else who is participating, so that you can visit to offer encouragement.

Are you ready to get serious about being a writer?

Are you missing the excitement of NaNoWriMo, or another of its ilk? (Do you have an unmanageable, rough-draft, manuscript under your bed?) Have you wanted to participate in the November frenzy, but chickened out at the last minute, or fizzled out half-way through? Did you, perhaps, realize that NaNoWriMo’s all-out, balls-to-the-wall approach doesn’t suit you? And that it isn’t ideal when you’re serious about building a writing career? Do you know, in your heart, that getting published requires small steps, taken every day?

Would you like an accountability project / support resource in place as you strive to achieve your resolutions?

I’m building this “linky group” (which is an entirely new concept to me) in an effort to support my own writing … and yours, regardless of what you are working on – fiction or non-fiction; traditional or independent publishing; book-length works or short pieces. All I ask is that you be serious about building a body of work and getting published.

HERE’S THE CONCEPT:
Each writer sets a personal, monthly goal of X-hours to spend working on developing his/her career.
This goal can, and should, vary from month to month. Life certainly does.
All tasks required by the writerly life count. (See ‘qualifying tasks’ below.)
At least HALF of the time allotted to the challenge should be dedicated to writing, revising and editing.
Participating in this project should NOT take time away from working.
It is NOT necessary to participate every month. (But, why wouldn’t you?)

QUALIFYING TASKS:
writing
editing / revising
researching
reading professionally (dissection / instruction)
blogging
platform building / networking
critiquing / writers’ group activities
searching markets
querying
preparing submission(s)
artist date ala Julia Cameron (fill the well, solo)
what did I forget?

The Writer’s Monthly Progress Challenge is about feeling accountable AND receiving encouragement & credit for our work (which is often nearly invisible to our non-writer loved ones.) It is not about giving us one more thing to get in the way of the actual writing. For that reason, I want to keep this simple.

HOW TO GET STARTED:

1. Make a tab or page titled ‘My WriMoProg’ at you primary blog.
2. Post one of the WriMoProg buttons at the top of the page.
3. Link it too: http://theparanormalist.wordpress.com/wrimoprog-home/ ‎
4. Decide how many hours to give to your calling in the remaining days of the current month.
5. Dedicate half (or more) of those hours to WRITING, REVISING OR EDITING.
6. Summarize your plans on the new page. (Label the section with the current month & year. Like this.)
7. Use the linky-thing, below, to sign up for the challenge. (There will be specific instructions when you do.)
8. You may make detailed notes about your progress on your My WrMoProg page, but remember not to spend too much time on it. (Yes, such time counts.)
9. Whenever you blog, add a line at the bottom of the post, like this: X + Y = Z / total hours goal. We’ll all know what it means. (X = writing/editing time, Y=other writerly tasks.) Like this: 0 + 7 = 7/200
10. Sometime during each weekend (Fri – Sun) check in on other participants by surfing the linky. Leave a supportive comment, if you like, anywhere he/she is posting progress notes. (Consequently, you’ll want to make sure you post your own progress somewhere by each Thursday.)

NOTE: Some of you might figure out how to host the linky itself on your page. As a wordpress blogger, I can’t. If you can’t, or don’t want to mess with it, the linked button on your My WriMoProg page will allow other participants to navigate from blog to blog by using the linky that will always be here.

(Yes, I think the graphic is silly. And the ‘links in collection’ tally lags.)

BY THE WAY: If you look at the WrMoProg Challenge button/badge, you will see I worked up some numbers that might be considered equivalent to a successful NaNoWriMo stint. Because writing speed varies so much, I made my best guess as to the amount of time writing a manuscript page takes.

My numbers are otherwise based on this equation:
Word count: based on 25 lines per page in Courier New 12 pt. averages approximately 250 words per page. 20 pages, an average chapter,=25,000 (sic); 200 pages=50,000; 400 pages=100,000; 600 pages=150,000; 800=200,000 words. Most books are between 50 and 100,000 words long. Publishers estimate by pages, including the white space. A computer count of 50,000 words may be 65,000 in publishers’ terms.
–Daphne Clair/Laurey Bright

So, here are some additional factoids to help you set your writing goals:

• Full time writer = 40 hours per week / 160 hours per month
• Half-time writer = 20 hours per week / 80 hours per month
• Average non-fiction book = 50,000 – 85,000 words = 200 – 340 hours
• Average novel = 50,000 – 110,000 words = 200 – 440 hours
• Ideal FIRST novel = 80,000 – 100,000 = 320 – 400 hours
• Average Novella (good for e-books) = 20,000 – 50,000 = 80 – 200 hours
• Average short story = 1000 – 7500 words = 4 – 30 hours

And don’t underestimate the time you spend doing everything else – from researching to blogging to reading within your genre. Suddenly setting some realistic writing goals seems pretty darn important, doesn’t it?

Use the 600 x 300 button/badge, found above, to link to this page, or use this smaller (300 x 150) version:

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