Writing Not-Quite-Wednesday: WIP500

I might have forgotten to mention in my incredibly generic New Year's Resolutions that in 2012 I plan to Write Everything All The Time ALWAYS.

Which is a big change from pre-2012 when I'd Write Some Stuff When I Feel Like It But Maybe I'll Take A Nap First.

So by a lucky coincidence (on Twitter: light of my life, fire of my unemployment) I came across Cara Michaels' WIP500 challenge.

Sorry, what about whips? [source]

Basically the challenge is to write 500+ words a day towards your current Work In Progress (WIP). Sadly, this does not include tweets, blog posts (unless you aim to be a pro blogger), or even long achingly witty facebook replies. Only what you're - gasp! - actually working on.

While 500 seems like a tiny number to those who've ever attempted NaNoWriMo, it really, really adds up. See, the challenge carries on for the whole of 2012, and by the end of it you'll have written 183,000 words! That's one meaty novel (The Grapes Of Wrath), or two short novels (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone), or almost 80,000 tweets. Cool, huh?

It's only been a few days, but I'm feeling pretty productive already. Cara Michaels and everyone in the twitter community is pretty supportive (check out the #WIP500 tag to see what I mean) and it's nice to connect with people who have similar goals.

If you want to join up, go to the WIP500 page and click on the right-hand 'Join' tab or find the linkytools list at the bottom of the intro post. If you're curious how I'm doing, find @awkwardoptimist on the participants page (currently I'm #11 - and I know, I'm already in need of a catch-up!) I'll also be posting about my progress here on my blog, so watch this space!

Oh, and apologies for this post being a day late (although it'd be silly to think that anybody sets their clocks by me!) I had a bit of a self-imposed internet blackout yesterday, and chose margaritas instead.