Goaling
The Ruby Slipper Sisterhood is holding their third annual Winter Writing Festival. This is the neatest idea I’ve see for while – the idea is that everyone who joins sets daily goals for themselves (write 1000 words, edit 25 pages, plot for 1 hour) then they assign points to whatever they pledge to do. They publicly track their points on the Festival website and can participate in writing sprints where everybody joins a group chat, chats for ten minutes, writes (solo) for twenty, they chats for another ten, then writes for another twenty. The idea is that knowing that there are so many other people writing at the same time as you, and that you’ve got to check back in at the end of the twenty minutes and say how much you wrote, inspires people to be really productive for that amount of time. It sounds fantastic to me! A real kick in the you-know-what! Of courses, there are prizes to be won for participating, and especially for achieving your goals.
There are two things that is great about this Festival: 1) you are setting a firm goal which you need to achieve every day. It can be whatever is possible for you and whatever you need to do. And 2) you’ve got a supportive group watching you, paying attention to how you do. You are forced to do something because there are people watching.
But what happens if you can’t participate in this right now (like me – I’m traveling)? Well, why not have your own mini festival? There’s no reason why you can’t. I’m thinking of doing this. I’ll set daily goals for myself. If I make the goals every day for a month, I’ll go out for a favorite cheap meal (a hamburger and fries from Five Guys, which I never allow myself ^_^) . If I succeed in achieving my daily goal for two months, I get $25 to spend at Amazon. If I’m brave, I’ll even make this public on facebook, checking in every day to let my friends and followers know how I’m doing, whether I make my daily goal or not.
So what do you think? Is this something you could or would do? Would you join me, or the Ruby Slipper Sisterhood?
