Admin Post: Admin Post: Year-End Marathon 2025

[gywomod]

At the end of the year, it can be tempting to give up on your writing goals. But giving up is not the Get Your Words Out way! We believe in writing. We believe in trying. We believe that any progress is good progress. So even if your big writing goals are out of reach, you can still reach a goal.

Let's set that new goal today.

Join us for the Year-End Marathon. And this is a special party, because we are inviting everyone!

Everyone—whether you're a current or previous GYWO member or have never even heard of this thing (is it a writing community? how do you pronounce "GYWO" anyway?)—EVERYONE is invited to join the 2025 GYWO writers in this marathon to the end of the year.


What Is the Year-End Marathon?

The Year-End Marathon begins Nov 1 and runs through Dec 31.

Make a pledge to write 15 Days each month (a total of 30 days) or 15,000 words each month (a total of 30,000 words).

Join other writers with the same goals on the GYWO Discord server in a set of channels exclusive to the YEM challenge where the moderators will be hosting special discussion topics and challenges for our YEM writers. YEM writers will also have access to GYWO writing sprints hosted on our Discord.

This year, we’re incorporating public, unlocked Dreamwidth discussion posts for you to participate in, as well as extra challenges and discussion posts on Bluesky, and a 30K leaderboard on Trackbear.

If you're new to GYWO, this can be a way to see if this community is right for you before our pledge drive for 2026 begins. And if you're a GYWO 2025 writer, this can be a chance to seize your goals and put in some concentrated effort at the end of the year so you can start 2026 on the right foot.


What Are the Requirements?

🤝 Like writers who sign up for the year-long GYWO challenge, you must have an account on Dreamwidth or through OpenID. GYWO usernames are based on Dreamwidth or OpenID usernames. New writers signing up for the Year-End Marathon will not have full access to the GYWO Dreamwidth community at this time, but there will be two unlocked discussion posts per month that YEM members may participate in. We hope you understand keeping our naming system consistent means the mod team doesn't have to sort duplicate usernames.

✍️ Write your words! The whole purpose of this challenge is to develop and maintain your writing life, so write something! All words and time counted toward your pledge progress 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. See our website for an overview of what words count for the word count pledge and what activities count for a habit pledge.

🌈 Be a rainbow, not a pain-bow. We would love for you to participate in our Discord community and basically ask that you not be a jerk when doing so. 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. (Also, if you have a problem with a member or find a conversation veering into uncomfortable territory, alert a moderator and we'll be on it as quick as can be.)

A monthly check-in specific to the Year-End Marathon will be posted for your own accountability, but attendance will not be taken and it is not a required part of your membership.
(Current GYWO writers—you're still responsible to check-in as part of your GYWO 2025 membership. Attendance is taken there, not on the Year-End Marathon check-in, so make sure to check in as usual.)


How Do I Participate?

To participate in the Year-End Marathon, complete the Year-End Marathon Pledge Form.

If you choose to join our Discord server, once your pledge has been processed, a moderator will assign you a pledge role to give you access to the YEM-exclusive area and writing sprints channel. Join other YEM writers to chat about the challenge, writing in general, and your writing life in particular.

On Discord: each week, moderators will post either a discussion topic or a writing activity for YEM writers. You can respond directly to the moderator as a reply or join in the wider discussion with other writers, depending on your comfort level.

On Bluesky: each week, moderators will post either a discussion question or writing challenge. Feel free to reply, quote post, tag us at getyourwordsout.bsky.social, or use the #gywo hashtag.

On Dreamwidth: twice a month, moderators will post discussion posts where you can talk about your progress and chat with fellow YEM participants.

All moderator-led engagement is crafted to support a wide range of writers, so whether you're writing fiction, nonfiction, or poetry or you engage in horror, romance, absurdism, or fanfic we do our best to find something to support your writing life.

✅To participate in the monthly check-in specific to the Year-End Marathon, you'll need to have access to the GYWO Discord server. The link to check in for the YEM challenge will only be posted on Discord. Check-in is optional but recommended.

Have you picked your pledge for the Year-End Marathon?
Remember, your choices are 15 Days per month (30 days total) or 15,000 Words per month (30,000 words total).

Pledging for the GYWO Year-End Marathon Ends Nov 7, 2025.

Pledge for the Year-End Marathon

If you have any questions, we're happy to answer them!
For more information about Get Your Words Out, please visit our website. Pledging for 2026 will open around December 12.

Comments

[komadori]

Love this!

[terminally_underwhelmed]

This is great! Question for both this event and the main GYWO pledging -- is it in the spirit of the challenge to make a pledge you're sure you won't be able to complete? The charting-your-progress and community aspect are really motivating for me and I'd love to be involved, but I'm in a super busy phase of my life and even the lowest tiers for GYWO are realistically out of reach for me right now.

[racheloddment]

1,000% yes, you can definitely pledge even if you don't think you'll complete it! The whole point is just to help you write, however much or little is feasible for you. Many folks don't make their pledge and still participate in the community aspects. As long as it's not going to be demotivating, we'd love to have you!

[terminally_underwhelmed]

Wonderful, just pledged!

[thatjustwontbreak]

Woohoo! I'm in! First-timer!

[theemdash]

Y'all signing up for the first time seriously warm my heart. Welcome!

[kalira]

Signing up for this again this year! Last year I'd already blown past my yearly pledge by this time (and adding a fun additional challenge/goal was nice), this year I am 99% sure I won't even hit it by the end of the year. . . So the YEM which I do think I can hit might be even nicer to participate in. ^^;

(BTW the Bluesky link in this post is borked.)

[gywomod]

Thanks! I knew there was a reason that didn't work, but covid-brain didn't help me articulate why.

[melayneseahawk]

I'm technically on a Habit pledge for regular GYWO, but I'm doing the Word Count pledge for this, because of the goals I want to meet. Similarly, I'm going to be trying for 30k in November, since I'll be travelling for most of December, and historically I get *no* writing done while doing the Family Rounds :-/

[topaz_eyes]

This year, we’re incorporating public, unlocked Dreamwidth discussion posts for you to participate in

On Dreamwidth: twice a month, moderators will post discussion posts where you can talk about your progress and chat with fellow YEM participants.

Is this still going to happen for Dreamwidth? I signed up for the marathon because of these statements. I have the confirmation of my marathon signup--though I did not activate the Discord code on the signup page. As I explained last year, I cannot use Discord. Ongoing perception issues with that site prevent me from keeping up.

Edit: Does this mean I should go ahead and create my own post here?

[theemdash]

Sorry, I'm the main moderator monitoring this post and having complete chaos at home the past two days.

The first public discussion is up here: Establishing a Writing Routine.

The second public post for YEM this month will be posting in the next day or so. That one will be more of a "how's your progress going?" kind of post.

The timing for December should be similar, one around the 10th and the other around the 20th. (Give or take.)

[topaz_eyes]

My apologies! I saw the post, I scanned it, but I completely missed the statement that it was for the Year-End Marathon. I assumed it was one of the regular monthly locked GYWO posts. That's entirely on me. Again, my apologies, because I honestly do appreciate your modding.

Maybe for future YEM posts, would it be possible to add "Year-End Marathon" or YEM to the title of the post? I will certainly try to pay closer attention as well.

I hope the chaos is settling! I am sorry I added to it.