Being Accountable: Round of Words in 80 Days (#ROW80)
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So I found out about Round of Words in 80 Days well enough in advance of the start date (today July 4th) that I had enough time to set a goal. I was hesitant to be accountable to the worldwide web for my progress, but in the end I’m actually being accountable to myself and my personal goal that I set. Round of Words in 80 Days (ROW80) is a writing challenge developed by Kait Nolan where everyone sets their own writing goal for the end of the 80 day period.
So far there are 83 participants and everyone has set their own goal from finishing five short stories and coming up with a title for their work in progress or to write 35,000 words.
I found it difficult to set a goal as a newbie writer because I don’t know how much I can produce on average when I make the time to do it. I don’t want to set the goal to high so that I’m doomed to fail from day one, but I also don’t want to set it too low so that its less challenging. Before setting a goal, I needed to figure out the timeline, so after doing some “math”, the deadline is September 22. This is just shy of 12 weeks of writing.
I’ve come up with two goals, so that if I don’t make my first goal, I can fall back on my second.
Goal 1: Write 5,000 words per week (which is approximately 714 words a day)
Goal 2: Write 50, 000 words total in 80 days (which is gives me 14 days of “if life happens” or “if Friday happens” freebies). I also have a two week vacation in this 80 day period.
When I see goal #2, I think that it will be a big challenge to make it, 50, 000 sounds like a lot, but it still won’t be enough to finish my work in progress. But I’m going for it and since I’m a newbie and if I realize that I can’t produce that many words, I will allow myself to include blogging in my total word count because hey it is writing.
So there you have it. My writing goals publicly announced. I will be following the #ROW80 hastag on Twitter to check in with the other ROW80 peeps to see how its going and to stay on track.
Good luck to all participants!
I’ll bet you’ll find your goals just about right for you. Good luck, Nicole!
Thanks Marcia. Good to hear I set reachable goals.