Next Dare - A Round Of Words In 80 Days

I supposed I could have joined A Round Of Words In Eighty Days (ROW80) earlier. It's one of the most flexible writing dares in the universe: they let you jump in or out every 3-4 days or so. However, I'm a completist, and so I wanted to finish up what I was doing, and start at the start of a round.

I will be joining them on October 3, as they start the fall round. I hope some of you will join me.

ROW80 has a very easy concept: it starts on the first Monday of every quarter (generally January, April, July and October), and ends 80 days later, which leaves maybe a week and half break between rounds. Participants post progress twice a week -- Sundays and Wednesdays, I think -- on their blogs, and put a link in the Linky page on the central site. (Here is the ROS80 info page.)

You set your own goals and you can jump in or out on any posting day. You can even make NaNoWriMo a part of your goals, if you want to do both.

IMHO, 80 days is a great length for writing a novel. It's also good for getting done a bunch of shorter fiction, or rewrites on several books. You could even set your goals for words or minutes, and decide what to write session by session.

It's also a great length for people who want to find and establish actual writing habits which last all year round. You can't sprint for 80 days -- you have to work at a pace you can sustain.

Here are my tentative goals for ROW 80

• 600 minutes a week. (Or 6500 minutes total - If I schedule myself a break in the middle.) This will be from October 3 to December 22.
  

Projects:

• Finish The Man Who Did Too Much, and get it out to some beta readers. I hope to get it published before the end of the round, so the final rewrite and prep will also be in this dare.
• "Six-Gun Santa," a Mick and Casey short mystery. (I think. It might turn out to be a novelette.) I want to publish this on the blog at Christmas.
• Devil in a Blue Bustle, a Mick and Casey mystery -- either a long novella or a short novel.
• Plot work on The Man Who Stepped Up, including some possible exploratory writing.
• Microfiction and flash fiction as there is time.

I also want to work on the series bible for The Serial - and larger plot arcs, etc., but unless I get all the rest done to my satisfaction, it won't enter into this dare.

But at the moment, my brain hurts, and I must frost brownies and organize things for tomorrow's events. (Just a couple more days...)

See you in the funny papers.