Introducing The Write More Collective

A fun, free way to commit to writing more in the new year—together!

Hi friends,

It’s hard to believe, but we’re just a few short weeks away from 2025! One thing about me: I love New Years Resolutions. I love setting goals for myself, and I love the idea of a fresh start, an occasion to turn the page and try again.

A lot has changed for me in the past year. I became a new mom. I lost my job. I sent out over 200 resumes — it’s not a good market, friends — and I started a new job in November. I re-launched this newsletter, and I figured out how to be a mom and still work on my memoir-in-progress, albeit at a snail’s pace.

During my many writing ventures this year, I often craved the community of an accountability group, especially when it comes to my book. I’m not ready to workshop my pages at this point, but an accountability group motivates me to make space for myself to write. So, I decided to create one myself!

Introducing: The Write More Collective!

The Write More Collective is a month-long writing challenge aimed at helping you carve out more time for your writing practice.

As the name suggests, the first goal of the challenge is to write more, whether that be more words, more minutes, or more days of the month.

The second goal of the Write More Collective is to be in community with fellow writers as we each endeavor to put words to paper! This challenge is entirely asynchronous, so how can we stay in community with each other?

1. Join weekly chats where we share our progress and offer each other encouragement. The chat is only accessible to subscribers, so make sure to sign up if you haven’t already! (This is open to all subscribers, free or paid!)

2. Track your progress in our Write More Collective spreadsheet! This is entirely optional, but it offers us a fun way to see our progress, cheer each other on, and even engage in a little friendly competition, if that’s the type of thing that motivates you.

   

   Toofer is very prolific.

   I’ve tracked my writing progress in these three ways in the past, and they each provided me a different type of motivation and momentum. As a slow writer, I’m often frustrated by word goals, but encouraged and excited to see just how many words I can produce even when I’m only writing for a few minutes every day. Tracking how many days and minutes I’ve written in a month assures me that I am, indeed, doing the work, even when my inner critic tries to convince me that I’ve slacked off all month. So set a word, minutes, or days goal and try to hit it! Or don’t, and just come along for the ride!

3. Occasionally, I’ll do writing sprints where we can all write at the same time. We’ll be writing separately — there’s no Zoom room or dial in of any type — but we’ll be together in spirit. Afterwards, we can come together in the chat to share our wins. Look out for my Notes throughout the month for details on those sessions! I’ll also post information in the group chat for folks participating there.

So here’s how it’ll work.

On January 1st, I’ll send out a newsletter with a link to our Write More Collective Tracker so you can begin logging your writing sessions. I highly recommend bookmarking the spreadsheet in your browser so you don’t have to return to this newsletter to find the link every time.

On January 5th, I’ll start our first subscriber chat to see how the first few days of the challenge are going! Make sure to subscribe to this newsletter so you have access to the group chat.

Rules and Guidelines

1. All types of writing are valid for this challenge, whether you’re working on a book, an essay, a newsletter, or something in between!

2. Track each writing session in its own line on the spreadsheet. Likewise, only edit your own lines in the spreadsheet. This “competition” is meant to be friendly and fun, so I’m trusting everyone to play by the honor system.

   

3. This is a supportive group, so be cool. I reserve the right to remove anyone from the group who’s not being supportive from the group and all associated community aspects of the Write More Collective.

4. Connect with other writers and enjoy yourself!

For those of you who aren’t interested in participating, Beyond the Page will be back to regularly scheduled programming on January 10th.