Kas: Would have posted this earlier, but i've been gone all day...

Prepare yourself for a very long post. You've been warned. :)


Okay, so as you all probably know by now, there has been some speculation on how much SAAWAKM has changed since the very beginning when me and Maiah created it... I know that alot of you weren't around back then. For the first month, there were only 5 of us; Me, Maiah, Ned, Nat, and Sarah. And since then, new members have been added. (Nicole was the first person to be sent an invite, but she didn't actually join for a while...)

Last Wednesday was the 5 month anniversary of SAAWAKM. We've gone from 5 to 15 in a litle more than 4 months.


But, for those who dont already know it, heres a little bit of backstory on SAAWAKM.


- SAAWAKM= Super Awesome Amazing Writing Adventures of K&M.

- Me and Maiah have been friends for almost a year. (It will be 1 year on August 25th. Haha. I just looked.) We started out with just writing emails, then it progressed to I.M.ing, and just went from there.

- Ned, Nat, Nicole and Sarah were all chosen because they were our either our favorites from Y!A or WOP. (Except Nicole. We've known her for almost as long as we've known each other. She had a blog way back when we had ours, but she deleted it.)

- The original idea for SAAWAKM was basically just a way to hold our own NaNoWriMo. Which, if you dont know, is a huge writing challenge in November where people try to write 50,000 word novels in a month. We all tried, and failed. Which is why the header says SAAWAKM "Our personal writing challenge"

- In the beginning, the challenge was to write at least 500 words a day, which we've all pretty much forgotten, and then post about what you wrote, how hard it was, what happened, etc.

- SAAWAKM used to be completely and utterly about writing, every post said at least something about your story. This has kind of been forgotten also, as most of us dont post about our stories as much anymore.

- SAAWAKM was supposed to be a place where we could go to get feedback, critisism, inspiration, or just support from other people our age who write.

So, with all that said, some people have said that they want to bring back the old 500 word a day challenge, and i think its a great idea. But, with everyone's hectic schedules i think it should be made to 2,500 words/ week. That way people can still do 500/day and have 2 days off, or just write throughout the week.

Another great idea was to have a sort of reward/punishment system for those who fail in getting the goal met. I know everyone just winced at the word punishment. haha.

Okay, so i say what we do is hold a sort of competition. I know, i know, just stick with me here. So im going to make a sort of progress chart, with every member on it. I'll actually do that now, so... hold please...



Here we are.
It will be much larger, but this is just so you can see...


















It will be in the side bar thing. Under the pages.


Okay, and so every week everyone will send me what they've written for that week, (Dont worry, I wont read them unless you specifically ask.) and then ill copy and paste into Microsoft Word and do a word count. Then i'll update this chart, and we'll have kind of like a race. If your anything like me, you'll be fighting for that top spot, and the bragging rights :D (I'll have to send my weekly stuff to Maiah, if she wants, so she can do the word count, and so you guys know I dont cheat. Not that i would, but i dont want ppl to suspect. haha.)


Right now, the names are in the order you were invited, i think, but after the first count they'll be from highest to lowest.


Now, for the reward/punishment thing. So, along with the challenge, we'll have a sort of system.


So, first for the reward. I think we should do kind of like a way to collect reviews, days off, etc. Like if i get all 2,500 words written in a week, i get 1 review and 1 day off (Which would basically be subtracting 500 from your goal for the week. So, instead of 2,500, i could use my day off and only have to write 2,000.). I'll keep track of the rewards too. You can keep them for however long you want. Good idea? Oh, and any suggestion as to what other rewards there could be???


Now, for the punishent. I mean, theres the obvious punishment of seeing your rank on the progress chart drop. but i think we should do something else... But im not sure what. I would say we could take away rewards, but what if someone has none? And if we did that, everyone would just use their rewards as soon as they get them, so even if they fail, they have nothing to lose... hmm... ideas???


All of this will be on a page, except the progress chart, where you can check your rewards, etc.

Okay, if you guys absolutely hate all of this, tell me. We dont have to do it, but i thought it would be a fun way of inspiring everyone to write, and to have a friendly competition.


Oh, and i think that every 2 months we'll have a "winner" with the progress chart competiton, and that winner will get a prize i have yet to think of. :D


And then we'll start everyone on the chart back at zero every 2 months. So we have a fresh start.

Oh, and before anyone asks, everyone starts at zero in the competition, despite what you already have written. Because there are a lot of ppl who started their novels a lot later than others, so it wouldn't be fair.


Anyways, Opinions? Questions? I actually really, really like this idea, it seems kind of perfect to get SAAWAKM back to its original form. :D And sounds amazingly fun!


Okay, im going to go figure out the prize.


Tell me what you think!

-K