This fall, I’ve decided to join the upcoming session of Round of Words in 80 Days.  Not familiar with ROW80? It’s an 80 day writing challenge that gives you the flexibility to set goals that are right for you.

Most of you have seen me get on my soapbox about why goals have to be personalized and targeted to each particular writer.  (This is why I’ve been so obsessed with the DIY MFA concept.)  So this idea of joining a writing challenge that will help me forge ahead on my projects but will give me flexibility in my goals is so appealing to me.  I love that ROW80 allows me to change goals midstream, because if I’m 40 days into the challenge and something just isn’t working, why torture myself for another 40 days, right?

I also love that the goal doesn’t have to be writing fiction exclusively or even drafting per se.  For instance, your goal can be for editing or any other writing-related measureable goal.  Again, whenever I hop on that soapbox, I could go on for hours about measurable goals and why they’re so much better for writers than those unreasonable and vague goals we usually set.  Like, we might say: “I want to finish my novel” and that’s a great start, but how do you actually plan to do it.  Better to say “I’m going to write 1000 words, five days a week and in about four months I should be pretty close to having a draft.”

ROW80 starts up on Monday so sometime this weekend, I’ll post my goals for the challenge.  Then, for the rest of the 80 days, I’ll be doing check-in posts Wednesday and Sunday, as well the usual YA Cafe posts on Fridays.  So that’ll be my schedule here at iggi&gabi for the fall.  I’ve been needing some sort of structure on this blog lately, so I think this plan for fall will help me get on track.

Write on!