Instructions for Participating in the FIRST EVER DFTBAuthors Writing Challenge

Follow DFTBAuthors on Twitter. Then @reply to DFTBAuthors by 11:59 p.m. on June 28, 2009, saying you want to be in the challenge and what your daily wordcount goal is.

Every night at midnight (or earlier if you want), local time, tweet @DFTBAuthors with your daily wordcount goal and that day's wordcount. So if your daily goal is 1000 words, and on Monday you wrote 1300 words, your tweet would look something like this: "@DFTBAuthors Goal: 1000, Monday: 1300."

For every day that you meet that goal, you get a point. For every day that you double your goal, you get an extra point. If you triple your goal, you get three points, and so on. As long as you @reply with your daily scores, we'll update them to DFTBAuthors.blogspot.com every day so that everyone can see how everyone else is doing! You can cheer each other on, challenge each other, etc.

Obviously, this will all be solely on the honor system. We aren't going to verify wordcounts or anything. This is a just-for-fun way to get a few people together and write like insane people for a week. :)


Tips for Wordcount Goal Setting: Pick a daily wordcount goal that you think is reasonably attainable but maybe just a little bit more than you might normally do. This will give you enough of a challenge without making you want to tear your hair out every day.

Let us know if you have any other ideas! And feel free to take this and run with it. Start your own mini-challenges or whatever you think will help you get writing. If you want to do page counts instead of wordcounts, that's fine too. Whatever! Just let us know by @replying so that we can post your daily tally.

If this works, there's a chance we'll do it again. Maybe again this month, or maybe we'll work out something regular, like the first week of every month. WHO KNOWS?

- Chelsea & Rebecca