Happy New Year! Let's kick off 2026 by weaponizing friendly competition and accountability. I'll keep this as simple as possible. FIRST Find a buddy! Just comment here saying 'looking for a buddy', OR reply to someone else's comment to pair up. Optional: Pick a cool team name. - If you do want, you can participate solo too and use the whole group as your sorta-buddy - THERE IS NO TIME LIMIT, YOU CAN JOIN ON JAN 31ST IF YOU WANT SECOND Individually decide, with your buddy, what each of you would like to accomplish in January. Your goals don't have to be the same, and there's no minimum! Pick something you'd genuinely like to do by Jan. 31st that is realistically achievable. For example: - Write minimum 15 mins 3x/week - Finish a short story/chapter/poem - Write X words over the month - Sit down to write 1x/week (EVEN IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE) THIRD Decide how you'll keep each other accountable! Do you want your buddy to ping you every 3 days? Will they look at summaries of your stuff every week (not even necessarily review, just 'here's what I did')? Bounce ideas off each other? - The rule here: If it works to keep you going when motivation wanes (and doesn't turn into a second job), it's valid. FOURTH That's it! I'll ping all the participants every Sunday and check how things are going, and then at the end of January, we'll all celebrate our wins and share what we worked on (either showing the work itself, or just sharing your progress if you'd rather keep the writing itself private)! So yeah, comment below with 'looking for a buddy' if you wanna join! I'll help pair people up if need be, and hell, I could use one myself :P

I figure I'll do these every saturday, since the 31st is also a saturday. This is where you'd show off to the group what you've done across the week if you're doing the challenge! THERE IS NO MINIMUM - even 1 word, 1 letter, even having devoted 1 second to writing this week (or technically 3 days lol) counts! And remember you can join the challenge at literally any point, just comment somewhere to let me know about it. So without further ado, the current contestants: @Kate Nixon reckon you'll be able to set aside that few minutes today? (I'll give my own update in a comment) @Casey Stamps @Mizu Minxx How's y'all doing? Decided on your goals for the month and such?