we're only ashes.

GYWO is BACK for 2026! We're starting our eighteenth 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 choose only one pledge.


( Membership Requirements & Information )


( Pledge Types )


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 2026 Pledge.)

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

Step 1: Pledge
Complete the GYWO 2026 Pledge Form. You must provide (1) your email address, (2) your Dreamwidth or OpenID username, and (3) your 2026 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. As such, if you are using OpenID, please make sure it is connected to Dreamwidth before pledging.

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 2026 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 2025 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 2026 Pledge Form will automatically send you email confirmation of your pledge. Additionally, we will be updating the GYWO 2026 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 2026 Writers list, email gywomod@gmail.com. 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, 2026 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 2026 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 2025 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 2026 Promotion post.

With GYWO 2026 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 2026 will be released around 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 2025.
• 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 2025.
• 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 2026. Come back next week and follow the instructions in the Pledges & Requirements post to make a pledge for 2026.