All Writers: If you are not on the 2025 Writers list, we have not received your pledge. You MUST PLEDGE before requesting membership access to the DW community.


Check your email or DW inbox.
If there is a problem with your pledge, we have attempted to contact you. This private contact will have more information about what you need to do to be a GYWO 2025 Writer.

New to Dreamwidth?
There are some Dreamwidth users who requested membership, but we have not received a completed pledge form for those usernames. Some of these users have a new journal, have not confirmed their email address with Dreamwidth, or don't have any public posts on their journal, which means we have no way to contact you with questions! Please check for your username on the 2025 Writers list. If it's not there, fill out the GYWO 2025 Pledge Form (available at the linked post).

Looking for Access to the Dreamwidth Community?
If you want access to the GYWO Dreamwidth community (the main hub of Get Your Words Out) and have already pledged, please make sure your membership request has been approved or that you have accepted a member invitation sent by a moderator. You have access to the GYWO DW community if your name appears in the Members list (scroll to the bottom of the page and look under “Members”) and/or if you can see the post at this link.

If your name is not on the profile-generated Members list and if you cannot see the linked post, please check to see if you have an invitation to accept or request membership. (You also should have received an email from us with the same links.)

Looking for Access to the Discord Server?
Make sure you updated your server nickname to include your GYWO username. More information about our Discord server and changing your nickname is available here.


Pledging closes end of day on Jan 15, so please act quickly to make sure you have the access you want!

If you have not pledged,
you MUST PLEDGE before
requesting membership to the DW comm.
Pledge Form = Membership.
No Pledge Form? No membership.

There are 10 DAYS to make your pledge for getyourwordsout 2025. We will not accept any pledges made after January 15. You MUST PLEDGE to be a member. (If you are listed on the 2025 Writers list, you’re good to go.)

To pledge, you must fill out the GYWO 2025 Pledge Form found on the Pledges & Requirements post. (Linked below!)

Have you pledged?
Read the Pledges & Requirements post before committing to your writing goals for the year & then fill out the GYWO 2025 Pledge Form (linked at the post!)

Have you requested membership to the Dreamwidth community?
Request Membership

Have you confirmed your pledge was processed?
Check the 2025 Writers list

If you want to share GYWO with your friends, please feel free to use either of the codes provided to let them know you’ll be writing a lot in 2025 and you think they should too.

You can also recommend they follow us on Tumblr (gywo) & Bluesky (gywo.bsky.social) for writing advice, prompts, memes, and other great information to develop their writing life. (Our Tumblr and Bluesky accounts are open to the public.)


GetYourWordsOut: Year Seventeen!
Pledges & Requirements | getyourwordsout.net

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Thanks for sharing getyourwordsout!

With GYWO 2025 Pledges opening next week, which pledge to choose is hopefully on your mind. Instead of letting everyone stew in their personal hells, we’re running down a few of the common things the mods tell panicked participants, and then offering up a pledge calculator to help you make this somewhat difficult decision.

If you have any questions about GYWO or what it's like to aim for a specific pledge, the comments are open for all your concerns. Sometimes talking to a writer currently working on a pledge can help you come to a pledging decision!


If you're new to GYWO and have a question related to our membership requirements, general guidelines, monthly check-ins, or what words or activities count, please visit our website. More information about pledging for 2025 will be released on Dec 12.


Word Count Pledge Vs Habit Pledge
Deciding between a Word Count Pledge or Habit Pledge can be a difficult decision. Here are some things to consider as you make your choice:
( Choosing Between Word Count and Habit )

Habit Pledges
Choosing between Habit Pledges comes down to deciding how much you plan to write each month:

• If you plan to write mostly on weekends, choose the 120 Day Pledge. That’s weekends + 16 days.
• If you plan to write mostly on weekdays, choose the 240 Day Pledge. That’s weekdays – 20 days, giving you a few days off.
• If you want to write every day, choose the 350 Day Pledge!
• If you've participated previously and 120 Days was too easy, but 240 Days was too hard, try the 180 Day Pledge to land right in between!
• If you've participated previously and 240 Days was too easy, but 350 Days was too hard, try the 300 Day Pledge to land in between!
• If you haven’t tried writing daily before but want to, we recommend the 180 Day Pledge as a way to ease into a semi-daily writing habit before tackling a more challenging pledge.

Word Count Pledges
First Time with a Word Count Pledge?
If you’ve never tracked your word count for the year, take a moment to assess how many words you think you’ve written in the past year. Consider things like whether or not you participate in word-count based writing challenges, how much you’ve published in the last year (self or traditionally published, fanfic, blog, etc), and how much you tend to revise your work (writing it entirely over or just editing lines).

• If meeting your goal is more motivating, choose a goal that matches a conservative estimate of how much you wrote in 2024.
• If you think you’ll lose interest if you meet your goal early, choose a goal that matches a liberal estimate of how much you wrote in 2024.
• There are no penalties for not meeting your pledge, so don’t be afraid to choose a pledge you may not be able to meet!

Pledge Calculator
Thinking about what projects you'll work on next year is another common way writers make decisions about their GYWO pledge. To aid that, we've created the Pledge Calculator. Click the link and download or make a copy to use the spreadsheet.

To save it to your Google Drive, you can go to File > Make a Copy from the web. If you are on mobile from a phone or tablet, tap the 3 dots at the top right, and go to Share & export > Make a Copy

To download in another format, go to File > Download from the web. On mobile, tap the 3 dots at the top right, and go to Share & export > Save as….

Fill in the title of your projects, estimated word counts, or estimated number of days you'll work on the project. The calculator will recommend a Word Count Pledge and a Habit Pledge based on the information you provide.


download or save the Pledge Calculator


Whether you've done GYWO before or used the calculator, you might have narrowed your choice to two goals. Here’s our advice for choosing between two word count goals…

( Go Big on Word Counts )
( Step Back on Word Counts )
( Keep Your Word Count Consistent )

The best advice we have is to look at your schedule and figure out where writing fits into it. Use the pledge calculator (or pen and paper) to list the projects, ficathons, and stories you might write next year and consider the word tallies or time involved. Really think about what's motivating for you—knowing you'll hit a goal or chasing down the finish line.

And if all else fails, you can do what some of our current GYWO members have suggested and pick your pledge based on the associated pledge color. 😉

Habit Pledges—120 Days (Backpacker), 180 Days (Excursionist), 240 Days (Explorer), 300 Days (Adventurer), and 350 Days (Globetrotter)
Word Count Pledges—75K (Light), 150K (Modest), 200K (Basic), 250K (Moderate), 300K (Difficult), 350K (Herculean), 500K (Outrageous), and 1M (Ludicrous)

As a reminder, your GYWO pledge is locked in for the full year.
You cannot change pledges mid-year.
If you hit your goal early, you're still part of the same pledge group.
So choose a goal to sustain you ALL year.


In the comments, let us know your pledging woes! Wonder how difficult another pledge is? Still need clarity on the pledge types? This is your opportunity to ask. After some discussion, hopefully you'll come away with a confident decision.

Note: Commenting to this post does not constitute pledging for 2025. Come back next week and follow the instructions in the Pledges & Requirements post to make a pledge for 2025.

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 2024 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 30K 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.

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 2025 begins. And if you're a GYWO 2024 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 2025 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. Writers signing up for the Year-End Marathon will not have full access to the GYWO Dreamwidth community at this time, but 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.

🌈 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 2024 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 and join the GYWO 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.

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.

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.

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 (30K words total).

Pledging for the GYWO Year-End Marathon Ends Nov 7, 2024.

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 2025 will open around December 12.

Today is the ABSOLUTELY LAST DAY to make your pledge for getyourwordsout 2024. We will not accept any pledges or membership requests made after January 15—no excuses or exceptions. You MUST PLEDGE to be a member. (If you are listed on the 2024 Writers list, you’re good to go.)

PLEDGE! REQUEST MEMBERSHIP! PLEDGE!

Have you pledged?
Read the Pledges & Requirements post before committing to your writing goals for the year & then fill out the GYWO 2024 Pledge Form (linked at the post!)

Have you requested to join the Dreamwidth community?
Request to Join

Have you confirmed your pledge was processed?
Check the 2024 Writers list

After today you cannot make ANY further changes to your pledge or membership, so it's also the last day for second guessing and switching pledges.

If you're not sure if pledging has ended, a post announcing "Membership Closed" will be posted. You may pledge until that post goes up and the GYWO 2024 Pledge Form is deactivated on Jan 16.

Now that the final numbers are in, we have one more post to wrap up GYWO 2023.

While we commend every writer who stuck with getyourwordsout through the entire year, we’d like to take a moment to celebrate the writers who didn’t just stick with the community but who also achieved their pledged goal.

Below the cut is a list of the writers who met or surpassed 100% of their pledge. With their name is listed either the percentage they achieved or the number of additional days they wrote and when they completed their pledge. Come celebrate these writers for completing their GYWO challenge! (If you want to check out the amazing word count and day count totals, see the 2023 Pledge Progress Spreadsheet or look at the community totals at the 2023 Progress page to see how much we wrote as a community.)

( GYWO 2023 Finishers )

If you want to share GYWO with your friends, please feel free to use either of the codes provided to let them know you’ll be writing a lot in 2024 and you think they should too.

You can also recommend they follow us on Tumblr (gywo) & Bluesky (gywo.sky.social) for writing advice, prompts, memes, and other great information to develop their writing life. (Our Tumblr and Bluesky accounts are open to the public.)


GetYourWordsOut: Year Sixteen!
Pledges & Requirements | getyourwordsout.net

( Promotion )

Thanks for sharing getyourwordsout!