Get Your Words Out

GYWO is BACK for 2025! We're starting our seventeenth year-long writing challenge with thirteen pledges to help you challenge yourself, achieve your writing goals, and build a writing life.

Keep in mind that even our smallest goals require a serious commitment throughout the year. While it’s okay for writers to be behind or even entirely miss their pledge goal, we want you to pick a pledge that will keep motivating you all year long. Before choosing your pledge, please take note of the few requirements we have of our members, and carefully consider which of the thirteen pledges you'd like to choose. You may only choose one pledge.


Membership Requirements & Information

Given that this is a year-long challenge, we expect members to be writing throughout the year. While obviously some months will be better than others, and life can toss roadblocks into writing plans, we are here to encourage you to develop a consistent writing life despite these distractions.

There are a handful of requirements to joining GYWO.

• 🤝 You must have an account on Dreamwidth or through OpenID. (If you are a previous member using a new name or new service, please let us know.)
• ☝️ Sign up using ONE account. (You may use a writing journal instead of your personal one, just please sign up with only one.)
• ✍️ Write your words! The whole purpose of this community is to develop and maintain your writing life, so write something! All words and time counted toward your pledge progress over the year must be your own work. Use of generative AI or passing off the work of a collaborator as your own is against the spirit of Get Your Words Out.
• 🌈 Be a rainbow, not a pain-bow. Disrespect of the community and its members, along with hate speech, harassment, abuse, and endangerment may result in your removal from the community. We're pretty chill and ask that you be chill, too.
• ✅ All members MUST participate in the monthly check-ins. Each month members provide their current year-to-date (YTD) word count or day count totals to the moderators. You will only ever be required to provide numbers; sharing what is written is completely optional. (Excused absences and late check-ins are available.)

The community’s pledge progress is used by the moderators to determine trends in the group and help gauge when additional encouragement may be needed. We also keep a backup of all members' word counts or day counts available in the Pledge Progress spreadsheet for members' viewing.

If you do not check in for a month, it will be noted. Following the May and September Check-Ins, the moderators will conduct a Membership Clean-Up to remove any inactive accounts. What does “inactive” mean? At the May Check-In, any members who have missed 4 check-ins, will be removed from the community. If a member checks in for May, their account will be considered active and will not be removed. However, at the September Check-In, all members who have missed 6 check-ins will be removed. Members are expected to keep track of missed check-ins. These records are available in the Pledge Progress spreadsheet for members' viewing. Please see the information on Monthly Check-Ins for further details.

Since check-ins are so important, we strongly recommend you track the !monthly check-in tag at the community, take advantage of the check-in link sent in our monthly newsletter, or make note on your personal calendar that check-ins are always open during the first 5 days of a month. Additionally, if you know you will be unavailable during the time frame for an upcoming check-in, you can request to be excused (more information is available on the website).


GYWO provides many opportunities to help you get your words out, including monthly challenges, writing sprints, and annual writing events and games, as well as occasions to network and find beta readers and editors or discuss writing and the writing life. We also offer trackers to help you stay on top of your writing progress and projects. Participation in all of these aspects of the GYWO community are optional (but seriously, this community is fantastic, so why would you skip it?).


Word Count Tracker, Habit Tracker, & Pace Tracker

Other community information, including answers to questions you may have, is available on our external website. These include:
Why Pledge?—what you can get out of GYWO
Guidelines—how to navigate membership changes and member conduct
Countable Words—a guide to what words count for the Word Count Pledges
Writing Activities—a guide to writing activities and parameters for the Habit Pledges
Monthly Check-ins—a preview of the check-in procedure
Community Guidelines—what to expect in the GYWO community
Monthly Schedule—what happens on a schedule in the GYWO community Updated information for 2025 coming the week of December 16
About Us—who makes up Get Your Words Out

After reading these, please let us know in this post if you have any additional questions you need answered before making your pledge.


Pledge Types

GYWO offers two kinds of pledges dedicated to helping you increase your productivity and prioritize your writing life.

Word Count Pledges

Word Count Pledges are GYWO Classic, focused on writing a certain number of words over the course of the year. Writers may use any number of writing projects to add to their word count over the year. Projects may include (among other things) novels, fanfics, poems, songs, and essays. You may count any words you write, regardless of if you edit them out of your final draft. Think of this as a way to measure the amount of work you put into your writing each year. You can find out more information about what words count by visiting getyourwordsout.net.


Word Count Pledges
• 75K words, the Light level, approximately 6.25K words/month, 205 words/day (recommended for members with significant impact to their writing time)
• 150K words, the Modest level, approximately 12.5K words/month, 411 words/day
• 200K words, the Basic level, approximately 16.6K words/month, 548 words/day
• 250K words, the Moderate level, approximately 20.8K words/month, 685 words/day
• 300K words, the Difficult level, approximately 25.0K words/month, 822 words/day
• 350K words, the Herculean level, approximately 29.1K words/month, 959 words/day
• 500K words, the Outrageous level, approximately 41.6K words/month, 1,370 words/day
• 1M words, the Ludicrous level, approximately 83.3K words/month, 2,740 words/day

Think carefully before choosing one because you won’t be able to change your pledge during the year.

Habit Pledges

Habit Pledges are designed to help you build a writing habit by counting the number of days you spend on writing activities. For the purposes of these pledges, writing activities must have a recorded creative element such as drafting or revising, outlining or brainstorming on paper, writing query letters or synopses, or completing world building or character sheets. Instead of focusing on word count production, these pledges offer a more holistic take on the writing life. You can find out more information about habit pledge activities by visiting getyourwordsout.net.


Habit Pledges
• 120 days, the Backpacker, approximately 10 days/month
• 180 days, the Excursionist, approximately 15 days/month
• 240 days, the Explorer, approximately 20 days/month
• 300 days, the Adventurer, approximately 25 days/month
• 350 days, the Globetrotter, approximately 29–30 days/month

Think carefully before choosing one because you won’t be able to change your pledge during the year.

Mutually Exclusive

You may choose only ONE pledge for the purposes of official tracking at GYWO. If you are interested in both a Word Count Pledge and a Habit Pledge, we invite you to personally and unofficially track one of them—the official pledge trackers make it easy to keep track of a secondary goal and the information can help you choose a pledge in future years.

Pledging

If you pledged in a previous year and didn't meet your goal, quit, or were removed from the comm for missing check-ins, you are welcome to pledge again.

When choosing your pledge, consider your personal writing habits and what you find most motivating. Will hitting your word count goal early help propel you to keep writing through the remainder of the year? Do you need a major challenge to keep you on pace? Have you surpassed smaller goals in previous years and need more of a challenge? Are you already writing multiple days a week? Make sure the pledge you make is one that will motivate you. (If you need help deciding, please check out our post Choosing Your 2025 Pledge.)

To make your pledge, there are two steps to complete: Pledge & Request.

Step 1: Pledge
Complete the GYWO 2025 Pledge Form. You must provide (1) your email address, (2) your Dreamwidth or OpenID username, and (3) your 2025 pledge level.

Your email will be added to a GYWO newsletter mailing list. This monthly newsletter includes a link to the monthly check-in and brief community news. Your email is also the primary contact for moderator questions and reminders throughout the year. Your email address will never be shared without your explicit permission.

Your Dreamwidth or OpenID will allow you access to this community where you will find discussions and support, writing challenges and games, and more. Members are not required to participate in the community (but we hope you will). This username is your official GYWO username and will be used at each check-in to identify who you are in our database.

Your Pledge Level is your goal for the year. Even if you exceed your pledge, you’ll identify your official pledge level at each check-in.

If you participated in GYWO previously under a different username than the one you plan to use this year, please take your best guess at your previous username—we track repeat members so we can see how the community has grown year to year.

Optionally, we request your Discord, Bluesky, and Tumblr usernames and your birth month for a monthly celebration post.

• Any GYWO writer may join the GYWO Discord at any point during the active year—just follow the instructions once you join the server to receive full access.
• For Bluesky, we only follow back GYWO writers who have provided their accounts for the current year.
• On Tumblr we interact with accounts who ping or message us, but it's helpful to know if you're a current GYWO writer.
• For birthday celebrations, we only include GYWO writers who have provided their birth month for the current year.

Reminders: Sign up for only ONE pledge.
Sign up with only ONE account.
You may sign up using Dreamwidth or OpenID.
You may use a fic/writing journal instead of your personal one.
If you have previously participated under a different username, please let us know so we can track our repeat members.

Step 2: Request
Once you have completed the GYWO 2025 Pledge Form, please request to join the Dreamwidth community if you are not already a member. We will approve memberships on January 1st (as we still have 2024 members scrambling to hit their goals!), and we'll hold you in the queue until then. You're also invited to use the link provided on the confirmation page to join our Discord server. Access roles are assigned starting on December 31, but it's a good idea to get yourself acclimated to our server rules before then.
If you are a current GYWO member or already have access to the GYWO Discord server, you won’t need to request membership. But it may be a good idea to confirm you can view Dreamwidth member-locked posts and see the full channel list on Discord.
If you are not planning to use Dreamwidth, let us know in the pledge form. You still need to sign up with a DW or OpenID account, but we won't hound you about joining the community. (But really, we strongly recommend it.)
If you are not planning to use Discord… you don't need to do anything, actually. But it is where we host writing sprints.


If you’re concerned we didn’t receive your pledge:

The GYWO 2025 Pledge Form will automatically send you an email confirmation of your pledge. Additionally, we will be updating the GYWO 2025 Writers page on the website as new members are processed. If you don’t receive an email and your name isn’t added to the 2025 Writers list, email [email protected]. Please give us at least twenty-four hours before inquiring about your status. (Over the Christmas holiday we will not be processing pledges, so please check back on Dec 27th.)

IMPORTANT: Anyone requesting to join the community who has not made a pledge will not be added. To ensure you are not left out, make your pledge first, then request to join.


You have through January 15, 2025 to make your pledge.
After that time you will NOT be able to change your pledge
or join the challenge, so think carefully before committing.


Got all that? Then it’s time to complete
the GYWO 2025 Pledge Form

If you still have questions, ask them here! But hopefully this post covers everything you need to know about what is required of members, what the pledge options are, and how to make your pledge. We hope to see your pledge soon!

FAQ
• If I’m a 2024 member, do I need to pledge? Do I need to request membership?
• Can I pledge if I previously quit the challenge, was removed for missed check-ins, or didn’t meet my goal?
• How do I change my pledge? What if I decide I'm not ready for GYWO this year?
• I participated before but can’t remember my previous username. What do I do?
• How do I track my pledge?
• What happens if I finish my pledge early?
• What happens if I don’t finish my pledge?
• Do I have to participate in the Dreamwidth community? Do I have to regularly check Dreamwidth?
• How do I get or retain membership on GYWO Discord?

If you want to share GYWO with your friends, feel free to snag one of our banners at the GYWO 2025 Promotion post.