Time flies, eh? Gonna ping those who've signed up in the initial challenge post, but there's still time if you'd like to hop in! If you're tagged here, comment down below what you managed this week, no matter how small. Team 1: Me and @Kate Nixon Team 2: @Mizu Minxx & @Casey Stamps Team 3: @Noemi Mandysová & @Marisela Brazfield Team 4: @Kirsten Ivatts & @Jessica Huckabay Team 5: @Tatianna Stevenson @Adam Palmer Team 6 (tentatively): @Glauco Portolan & @Autumn Reed (never saw an explicit 'we're teaming up' thing, but y'all both expressed interest so you're getting pinged anyway lol)

Spent some time today going through the reams and reams of notes I have for my setting/series, the Patchwork Places. Safe to say I remembered why I've put this off for so long. I mean, good lord, there's so much! Worldbuilding documents that go into ridiculous depth about locations no one is gonna visit in-story. Character profiles with the most random, irrelevant details sprinkled in. Plot arcs with 4 different versions that all contradict each other but are all cool. Random little notes that I'm sure meant something profound when I wrote them but are indecipherable now. All stuff I loved doing at the time, and certainly will help make the finished work be higher quality, but the fact that I spent so long last year creating all this detail and no time organizing it has definitely bit me in the butt now 😵‍💫 Anyone else have this happen, where you procrastinate the boring side of your ideas (actually organizing them) until you're forced to? I think it's something that happens more often than we might like to admit, both in writing and other places.

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