Weekly Writing: Sign up!

So I was thinking about how there are people who have trouble writing things in a timely manner, and how I try to write every day.

It occurred to me that while not everyone has the time I do to manage writing something every day, once a week seems pretty reasonable.

And so, I'm starting, well, I guess it's a club of sorts. Basically, you sign on and declare that you're going to aim to write something every week.

You can also make goals other than that, and be more concrete about what the writing will be! That's cool too. Maybe you're really busy but you still think you can manage to write something once a month; maybe you're like me and are eager to write something every day. Or maybe you've always wanted to write a novel and you've decided to say "I'll write three paragraphs for it every week". All of these are cool! I just think "write something once a week" is a good starting point if you want to try to be more disciplined about it.

Essentially, this is a personal development thing that may also help people with chronic Procrastinating On Writing issues. Feel free to declare your interest here, state your personal goal, and maybe post the occasional thing you produce. (Or you can make your own thread for that, and link to it here! That's also good.)

So, to start this thing off: As I've noted, I try to write something every day. This may be a GB post, an update for a relatively text-heavy adventure, a script for one of the adventures I work with artists on (and am grateful for their efforts), a character profile, or if none of those seem to suit my mood at the time, just a random story. Sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's not. A few times I just get completely stumped and slap something together that I don't even like, but I feel that writing regularly has helped me to get writing done when I need to.
I'm going to work on keeping this up.

List of people signing up and goals

• Dragon Fogel: At least one piece of writing each day.
  
• Solaris: Write two things a week, one of them decently long.
  
• SleepingOrange: Write one GB post a week.
  
• PickYerPoison: Write something every week.
  
• cyber95: Write a haiku every week.
  
• XX and Godbot: One post a week each.
  
• btp: 1000 words for a single work in a week.
  
• Garuru: Write something at least once a week.
  

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

yay.

I'll pop in here now and again for sure.

Would this thread also be appropriate for asking for and posting critiques and opinions?

I think critiques are probably more suited for the Writing And Semicolons Thread, although admittedly we haven't yet seen any there.

ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

Obligin', for science

okay i will try because having goals is nice

Two writings in a weeks:
mutableish but two writing things, one of which is mid-big(grand battle post or short writing) the other of which is small (mafia daystart, minigrand)

I will write two (2) post in grand battles weekly. This week will see the finishing of an IS post and hopefully IA or SE, with a chance of GBS3 if I feel like neither of those.

You should keep commitments in the OP so I can feel more shame.

My goal's the same as Slorange's - write two GB posts per week (provided there are battles that need me to post in them).

Ok I'll sign up for 1 grand battle post weekly, interchangeable with any university assignment.

Well I don't really have any writing responsibilities right now.

I could like, write a haiku every week. I think I'm up to that.

I'm pitching in with Godbot as my co-captain since he proofreads everything I write anyway. We're going for a post a week each. I will accept no responsibility for what happens during finals week.

Not sure I actually am in enough battles to maintain a post per week (and writing besides battles clearly doesn't exist), but conditional with getting into another one of the S! battles and completing finals I'll try for a post per week.

Since a lot of people are saying "GB posts", I thought I'd lay out some thoughts of mine.

I think it's useful to have some other writing-type things that count towards your goal, even if you make GB posting a priority. There are three main reasons I think this way.

1) It gives you motivation to work on other projects.
Do you have an adventure or game or something you've been meaning to update, but you just keep putting it off? You can write a script for the next update and have that count for your weekly goal! (Of course, there's still putting images together if it's not text-only, but at least you've got something concrete you can start working on.)
Plus, there might be something you've always wanted to try your hand at writing but never got around to. This can be a reason to start it at last!

2) It makes writing more of a habit.
If you happen to get a week where there aren't any good posting opportunities, it means you're still thinking about writing. If you get a few weeks in a row like this (maybe you're not in that many battles, or maybe you had one really productive week where you posted in everything and it's taking people a while to catch up), then if you take that as a reason to take a break, you might find you're not used to keeping up the pace any more and start falling behind again. Whereas if you keep writing through the slow weeks, you'll still be focused on finding time to write.

3) It lets you meet your goals more often.
Maybe you try to write a GB post a week, then find you're struggling with every single battle you're in. If you keep having this happen, your motivation will start to sap as you keep missing your goal week after week.
But if you have "write something else" as a backup plan, while you may still be disappointed about not getting posts done if you felt you should, this will be mitigated a bit by the fact that you're still getting something done writing-wise. It especially helps if you enjoy writing the other thing. This can be good for keeping your motivation up even as you hit rough patches.

Anyways, those are just my thoughts, as someone who's tried to write every day and mostly succeeded. Ultimately, this is about what works for the individual; I'm just sharing what I've noted about how regular writing has helped me, and how I think it might be helpful for you guys.

Okay I'm going to start off small and work my way up.

My goal is going to write at least 1000 words per week - while trying to put all of those words into a single item.

Those items could be book reviews, adventure updates, job related bluh-posts, or really anything where a substantial amount of text is appropriate.


On a related note, while the writing club here is meant to encourage people, is there going to be any accountability system? Like a weekly check of who met their goal?

I may do a check this Sunday. I'm already seeing good progress this week.

So it's been a week! Let's see where we are.

Just for the record, I'll be summarizing on a Sunday to Saturday schedule for each week; however, as this is a personal growth thing, you might be counting your own week differently. That's fine; this summary isn't THE LAW OF THE LAND or anything. Just comment that it's how you're counting it.

• Dragon Fogel: Wrote something each day. (I'll provide a summary of what I wrote later.)
  
• Not The Author: Wrote a post for Glorious Chamiponship.
  
• Solaris: Wrote a post for Fearsome Encounter.
  
• SleepingOrange: Wrote a post for Intense Struggle and a post for Inexorable Altercation.
  
• PickYerPoison: Wrote a school assignment.
  
• Schazer: Wrote some Mafia stuff and finished a university assignment.
  
• cyber95: Wrote a haiku.
  
• XX: Wrote a post for Relentless Slaughter.
  
• Godbot: Nothing, busy with finals.
  
• Sanzh: Wrote a post for Last Thing Standing.
  
• btp: Wrote two chapter reviews for the cat book.
  

Overall, this is a solid start. Not everyone met their goals, but most people did.

I'm going to try and figure out which things I wrote on which day so I can summarize my own activities, I should probably start making a note of that as I write for later weeks. I'll have a post on that later.

In the meantime, if you have any comments on whether this helped you get writing this week, or anything at all, feel free to share! And, of course, anyone who's interested in signing up still can.

I'm a little worried that people might forget about this, or that I might cross the line from gentle reminders over into nagging.

If you're on the list and having trouble remembering about it, let me know and I'll send a PM around every Wednesday or so.

MEANWHILE! Here's what I wrote last week, followed by some overall thoughts on what I've been writing.

Sunday: Just The Facts update.
Monday: Consistency update.
Tuesday: First draft of a future GB character profile.
Wednesday: Short and nonsensical poem, began working on a new version of the above character profile, wrote Tamerlane/Syvex fanfiction.
Thursday: Finished character profile.
Friday: Silly story with the basics suggested by Malky.
Saturday: First draft of a Savage Brawl post.

Overall thoughts - this was actually not that productive a week for me; I updated two of my sillier adventures, spent three days on a profile, wrote a silly story, wrote silly fanfiction, and started on a post then ended up scrapping more than half of it the next day.

But the end result of that profile was something I was really pleased with, and I look forward to using the character; and the SB post draft did at least get me moving along, and I think the parts of it I scrapped help me to narrow my focus on other details.

I do feel this week is a decent example of how broadly I define "writing", though; if I work on a single thing for two days, as long as I make significant progress on each of the days, I'm good with counting it for both of them.

And sometimes I write nonsense and it isn't even particularly good nonsense. In terms of standards, I wrote the poem on Wednesday first, thought "nah, that's not enough", then I tried to work on the profile. I think I actually made some progress, but not that much; hard to remember at this point. The silly fanfic was good enough for me to say "okay, I did a decent amount of writing today".

I don't have a hard and fast rule on this, but I do try to write, and I try to write things I enjoy at the very least. Sometimes I don't quite manage that, usually because I'm particularly uninspired, it's nearing the end of the day, and I can't even string nonsense together in a way that works for me.

Just sharing my experiences here; again, if other people have commentary on how they feel this is going for them overall, or things that they found helped them to write, feel free to post them in here!

I think I might join this thing? I'll probably shoot for one GB post a week.

And another week's gone by! I haven't been able to check with everyone on the list this week, so for now I'm putting "Not Sure" if I haven't checked with someone or looked at things they've actually posted. If I wrote "Not Sure" by your name, feel free to tell me about things you've written in the last week and I'll edit this.

• Dragon Fogel: Wrote something every day.
  
• Not The Author: Didn't manage to write.
  
• Solaris: Wrote a Deathgame 9000 post and wrote words for Campfire Mafia.
  
• SleepingOrange: Wrote a post for Spectacular Exhibition.
  
• PickYerPoison: Not sure
  
• Schazer: Wrote a university assignment and wrote stuff for Mafias.
  
• cyber95: Not sure
  
• XX: Wrote a post for Quietus.
  
• Godbot: Not sure
  
• Sanzh: Wrote an eight-page history paper.
  
• btp: 800-word rant on dead birds and dogs.
  
• whoosh!: Wrote a round transition for Phenomenal Fracas.
  

And related to that, here's my record of stuff I wrote this past week:
Sunday - Began rewriting Savage Brawl post, mostly from scratch/
Monday - More writing for Savage Brawl post.
Tuesday - Finish Savage Brawl post, discover it's close to 5000 words.
Wednesday - Tonguewizard update.
Thursday - Fearsome Encounter post. (Went past midnight in writing it, but I'm only counting it for Thursday.)
Friday - Savage Brawl post, Tonguewizard update.
Saturday - Broken Prophecy update, started thinking about writing something else, which I may get onto actually writing today.

We could have had a better week, but I'm feeling good about this project on the whole. It seems to be giving people a little extra incentive to write, and I think that more writing is happening as a result. There's still some stumbling, but in general I think it's stumbling in the right direction.

I've got some thoughts on how to encourage more frequent writing, I'll probably share them tomorrow because they're sort of a jumble in my head right now.
In the meantime, if you have any thoughts on how this is going for you, it would be neat if you talked about that.

EXTREMELY LATE SIGNUP AHOY

I don't have much to write for, though, so I'll probably just do random stories weekly.

I came up a little short this week. I wasn't going to make it but at the last few frustrating minutes I tossed up an 800 word rant about dead birds and dogs.

SO PUT ME DOWN FOR: FAILED (CONTINUE? (Y)/N)

And it's Week Three! Here's the status.

• Dragon Fogel: Wrote something every day.
  
• Not The Author: Didn't manage to write.
  
• Solaris: Wrote a GB profile.
  
• SleepingOrange: Wrote a post for Phenomenal Fracas and a post for Grand Battle Season 3.
  
• PickYerPoison: Wrote a post for Vivacious Deadlock.
  
• Schazer: Wrote the epilogue for GB2, wrote a post for Fearsome encounter and a post for Quietus, wrote endgame flavor for Maftrimony, wrote a field trip report.
  
• cyber95: Didn't manage a haiku (but he did this week's just now).
  
• XX: Wrote a post for Quietus.
  
• Godbot: Not sure.
  
• Sanzh: Wrote a post for Journal of Sociology.
  
• btp: Not sure.
  
• whoosh!: Not sure.
  
• Garuru: Wrote a post for Journal of Sociology.
  

And my own list of things I wrote this week:

Sunday - A silly GB profile.
Monday - A silly story.
Tuesday - Revamped Eximo's profile for Grand Battle All-Stars.
Wednesday - Posted in Inexorable Altercation.
Thursday - Started on biography for Santinal profile.
Friday - Finished Santinal profile, wrote up some information on the setting of Parsley's homeworld.
Saturday - Tonguewizard update and a silly story.

It's been three weeks. I bet some of you have thoughts on how this has worked out for you so far; let's hear them!

I've enjoyed this! Even though i only managed a single week to make my arbitrary goal, I still have that goal up here and I'm not letting anyone down but myself. Which, I think, is refreshing.

Another week's gone past. Let's see where we are.

• Dragon Fogel: Wrote something each day.
  
• Not The Author: Wrote a Guest Round Transition for Grand Battle Season 2.
  
• Solaris: Wrote a profile for Santinal, posted in Journal of Sociology, posted in Fearsome Encounter, posted in Grand Battle Season 3, wrote a Mafia daystart.
  
• SleepingOrange: Wrote a post in Savage Brawl, a post in Fatal Conflict, and a post in Vivacious Deadlock.
  
• PickYerPoison: Didn't manage to write.
  
• Schazer: Didn't manage to write.
  
• cyber95: Wrote a haiku.
  
• XX: Not sure.
  
• Godbot: Not sure.
  
• Sanzh: Worked on a Last Thing Standing post. (Incomplete, but well into it.)
  
• btp: Not sure.
  
• whoosh!: Not sure.
  
• Garuru: Not sure.
  

My writing for this week:

Sunday - Wrote a silly story
Monday - Wrote part of a silly story.
Tuesday - Wrote a Grand Battle Season 2 post.
Wednesday - Wrote a character profile.
Thursday - Wrote backstory for Wednesday's profile and a Battle Majestic post.
Friday - Updated Tonguewizard and Pete the Peasant.
Saturday - Wrote a Murphy's Law update.

Not a week where I got a lot of really significant things done writing-wise, but hey, at least I got some adventures updated.
(Also I moved Firing Squad, that took quite a bit of time.)

Hello yes I should be imminently posting something this week and by next week I will have all school-related worries out of the way so I would like you to sign me up to your weekly naglist please because I have a recurrent procrastination problem
Like at least a grand battle post a week or a particularly lengthy adventure update if I don't have any of those to post in and when I get around to doing those again because dang I can get a little carried away with the text in them sometimes