2014 has bowed out to make room for 2015 and with it comes New Years Resolutions and goals for the upcoming year. As many of you know I’m an avid supporter of NaNoWriMo and Camp NaNoWriMo. I talk about both all the time and harass my Facebook with word count updates and novel descriptions. At every opportunity I share what I’m working on and how well I’m keeping up with my writing goals. It’s a great motivation to be honest.

This year… or should I say, last year, I had the great opportunity to meet a number of talented writers via my Facebook CampNaNoWriMo group. Among this group of wonderful individuals were a number of whom I came to call ‘the WriYe girls’ which could be classified due to their insane word goals for the year as well as for the NaNo months. (FYI, WriYe isn’t all girls.) Through this group my new writing buddy Tiffany introduced me to the yearly challenge known as WriYe. I was completely blown away by her word count goals she laid out for herself and has done so again for this year.

I’ll take a moment to explain what WriYe is to the best of my ability. Just remember that I am a complete WriYe newbie so please bare with me if I don’t have all the information or say something wrong. WriYe is a YEAR LONG writing challenge born from NaNoWriMo. Its an unofficial group with no affiliation to the official NaNoWriMo website.

You don’t have to join at the start of the year, but I understand that this time of the year is the most active as everyone is excited to get their challenge started. Its easy to join, just sign up on their forums, everyone is welcome!

You can choose any goal you’d like for the year, as the goals are really a personal thing depending on what you wish to accomplish in your writing. Goals range anywhere from 50k to over 2MILLION words. I would just like to say right here, to the writers who are doing one million and beyond, “You are my heroes!”. I can not fathom the work and dedication that must go into achieving one million plus words in one year!

Once you choose your goal you sign up in the appropriate group and let the motivation begin! In your group you will find others with similar goals in which to converse and compare ideas. Not only do you have this one group, but you have the option to create your own thread where you outline your goals for the year. In this thread you can state what word count you’re looking to achieve, your daily goals and outline the projects you hope to work on. Personally I find this idea of your personal thread to be a kind of accountability which will no doubt motivate me to get off my butt and actually do the writing that I’ve outlined. You can also peruse the other threads and see what the other participants are working on this year. Trust me, there is some real creativity held within those threads and you’re likely to find writers with similar genres and ideas!

On top of your progress thread to keep you accountable, there are also challenge threads! There’s a calendar you can download which outlines which challenges are being run so you can keep up with what’s going on. You’re welcome to join any of the challenges. I don’t really know exactly what all the challenges are, but for example, I’m in a consistency challenge. The challenge is to write at least a set number of words every day for as long as you can. (The original challenge is for a week, but you’re encouraged to see how long you can keep it up.) As this is my first challenge I choose the 750 mark, which is 250 less than my daily goal of 1k.

There is a Skype challenge for those of you who like to get to know the other writers in real time and I’m finding it quite fun. I’ve already met a number of awesome writers and I’m enjoying sharing goals. I’m sure these veteran WriYers will be instrumental in my own success! A number of these authors have blogs of your own so here are just a couple in case you are curious:

http://erinfosterbooks.com

http://violetfirebird.blogspot.com/

http://greymattermargarita.blogspot.com

I highly recommend WriYe to anyone who’s got a New Years Resolution involving wanting to do more writing. I think its going to be a highly motivating and fun experience!