Image by evilnick via Flickr
I keep banging on about how I’m working on a new project and trying different approaches to get over the line with my latest novel. One thing I found, and just quite spur-of-the-moment decided to try, is this thing called ROW80, have you heard of it? It’s A Round of Words in 80 Days, a community of bloggers who aim to support each other in achieving personal writing goals. The way it works is, you register, you post updates, and there’s also some rather cool sounding other stuff I have yet to figure out.
Guess what, I’m a bit behind the eight ball getting my goals posted, because it kicked off last week. But apparently that’s okay. And I think I muffed a bit on not getting my update posted before now, but supposedly that’s okay as well. I love the laid-back feel of this challenge, so much more aligned with my own way of doing things than the NaNoWriMo.
So, down to business. Goals. I’ve really only got one goal at the moment, though that may change. I intend to write at least two notebook pages per day, six days a week. I missed one day this week – so far I’m on schedule! And I am on holidays after all 
! There are some things I don’t understand about doing this. Like, what the hell is a “blog hop”? What are Linky Tools exactly? And how do I get that cool ROW80 badge on my blog? Come to that, how do I get my own badge?!
So this is it, it’s official. Here I am. Come ye bloggers. And please, someone tell me if I stuffed this up!! And to my usual reading/writing friends, I’ll still be posting normal stuff here too. And if you’re a blogger you might like to check it out too.
That’s a great place to start. Depending how big or small you write, that could be anywhere from 300-600 words a day. A blog hop is where you literally hop from one blog to the next. Linky Tools is a site that let’s people post links (we use it for each others blogs) and is kept in a central location. It’s good for signups and other things. Linky offers blog hop code that we can paste into our post that allows other readers to hop to the next ROW80 update instead of going back to the ROW80 page. I don’t think WP.com allows it though. You can download the badge from the ROW80 blog and then add it as a sidebar widget in your control panel or put it in your post. Good luck!
It’s a small notebook! so probably more like 300. I’m more of a stroller than a sprinter at the moment, can’t you tell?
Thanks for your good wishes, and same to you Ryan!
Glad to see that we’re not the only new joiners!
Hi guys! this sounds like fun
Welcome aboard and good luck with your goals!
As to your questions:
What is a blog hop? It’s where everyone is connected by a subject (in this case ROW80). They post their version, link back to the main blog, with the goal that visitors will click through to each blog.
What are Linky Tools? This is where you link your blog to the main ROW80 blog. It’s a third party program but that’s beside the point. You’ll want to link your update posts (not your main blog URL but the URL for the actual post) to the Linky Tools listed on the main ROW80 blog post for the appropriate date. For example, today’s post should be linked to today’s update post on the ROW80 blog. Clear as mud, LOL.
How to get the badge? What I did was right click over the image on the ROW80 blog and save it to my computer. Then I uploaded it to my blog. In the widget section, add an image widget to your sidebar, add the uploaded badge image. I also put the URL to the main ROW80 in the appropriate box in the image widget so if people click on the image it takes them to the ROW80 blog.
Hope that helps.
Hi Raelyn, Thanks for all the info!! I tried copying the blog hop link code into my update url html yesterday but nothing happened. Does this not work in wordpress? I’ll try your badge method, I’m still a total noob, can’t you tell?
see you around! Karen
I haven’t figured out the badge or the blog hop. (I’m a lot of help!) But you just copy and paste your blog’s URL in the linky thing to link people to your updates.
Good luck on the challenge! I’m a first-timer too.
I think I boo-booed when I linked, I have two links, one to the update url and one my blog url. Oh well, learning by mistakes!
Thanks, and good luck too!
Good luck with it all. Enjoy!
Thanks Jo!!
Welcome to ROW80. Glad you decided to join in. Lots of folks here who will provide plenty of encouragement. I’m doing nano again this year as well.
Thank you! I’m looking forward to it!
It appears your questions were answered, so I won’t repeat good advice. The main thing about ROW80, like you elude to in your post, is that it is flexible. So if it takes you a while to hit your stride, it’s no big deal. Have fun, and ROCK THE ROW!!!! ~clink~
Welcome to the party!
Rule 1: Write. Through rain, sleet, snow, hail, hurricanes, small dogs, fire.
Rule 2: Life Happens–oh, well.
Rule 3: Keep writing. We’ll be here when you need us.
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