Welcome back to the Novel Push Initiative!

This time around, there’s a very good incentive to writing more than 250 words per day, and there’s still that accountability we all know and love.

If this is your first time participating, welcome! I hope you’ll find support and encouragement (and your writing) will flow like water this March.

THE BASICS:

• Event will run from March 1st-31st.
• Simply write or edit 250+ words per day!
• Blog posts don’t count. (Unless you’re blogging your WIP….)
• You may work on as many different projects as you’d like to during the event.
• You’ll need to publish your daily word counts every day by midnight using a blog of some kind; something that I can check against a time-stamp (Even a Twitter account will do).

               The simplest Tweet can look like this:

                               Day 10: 250 words.
                               11:59 PM March 1st from web.  

• Also, if you’re using Twitter, I encourage you to use the hashtag #novelpi 
  
                    Day 10: 250 words. #novelpi
                    11:59 PM March 1st from web.
  This will make it easier for people to follow along! Just Search for #novelpi on the Twitter website.      

• We’re on the honor system here, folks.
  You can post your wordcounts the next day if you have to. But at least try to get them there by midnight so I can write about how awesome you’re doing in these posts.
• If you’d like to participate but haven’t signed up yet,
  you’ll need to reply to this or any of my blog posts prior to March 1st, stating your interest. Alternatively, you can contact me.

ADVANCED RULES:

• The break-down:
  1. A “Knock-out” is 0-249 words. (After your Days of Reprieve are gone….)
  2. An “Update” is 250-999 words.
  3. A  “Session” is 1,000-1,667 words. (This earns you a Day of Reprieve!)
  4. A “Tougher-than-NaNo” is anything greater than 1,667.
  5. A “THE END” is when you’ve completed a WIP and type ‘THE END’.
     
• You can be as detailed as you want.
  The simplest post can be just a word count, but you’re welcome to keep track of your total word count, talk about what you’ve been writing, and maybe even share a snippet or two—if you’re feeling generous.
• If you complete a work and write THE END,
  you don’t have to meet the 250 word quota that day. In other words, if you wrote 100 words to finish a short story, you can be done. You don’t have to hunt down another manuscript and write 150 more words to meet the 250 word quota for that day.
  ex:

Day 11: 36 words. THE END! #NovelPI
8:30 AM March 18th from web.

• Everyone starts with one ‘Day of Reprieve’.
  This is a day where you can get away with writing less than 250 words for whatever reason. Hopefully this will go a long way to prevent burn-out/serve as padding in the event of an emergency.
  ex:

Day 21: I’m using a Day of Reprieve! #novelpi
5:40 PM March 21st from web.

OR…

Day 21: 0 words. #novelpi
5:40 PM March 21st from web.

OR…

Day 21: 249 words. #NovelPI
5:40 PM March 21st from web.

OR…

Nothing for #novelpi for March 21st… :(
5:40 PM March 21st from web.

All of these examples result in a Day of Reprieve being used.

• And the most exciting new rule of all:
  If you write 1,000 or more words in a day, you earn an additional Day of Reprieve!

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?:

• At the very minimum, if you keep up, you’ll end up with 7,500 words added to your works-in-progress. This is a great kick-in-the-butt for us procrastinators!
• I think you’ll find NPI is surprisingly uplifting and friendly—everybody participating (and the people watching from the sidelines) tend to be extremely supportive. Which leads me to…
• You’ll meet lots of new friends! :D
• I will periodically link to each of your sites and post your word-tallies up to a “Knock-out”.

So get ready, because March 1st will be here before we know it. We must learn to write every day. Make it a ritual! We must persevere and march, ever forward, toward the ends of our stories!