Writing Sprints

[Kaymyth]

Hello my fellow writers of the 17th Shard!

 

Do you find accountability helpful for your daily writing productivity? Maybe you find that a little friendly competition spurs you on? Or perhaps you simply enjoy a bit of camaraderie now and then?

 

Well, starting Monday, September 6, Rasaar and I are going to be running regular writing sprints on the Shard Discord! We’ll go Monday-Friday, 2pm-5pm Central Time US.

That is, for reference:

12pm-3pm Pacific Time (US)

3pm-6pm Eastern Time (US)

8pm-11pm London Time (UK)

 

What the heck is a writing sprint?

A writing sprint is a focused, timed period of writing designed to increase word count by dissuading distractions and, with multiple participants, add a little competition. NaNoWriMo calls them Word Wars, but the principle is the same: set a timer, WRITE, then report on your progress! We’ve also added a new bot to the Discord server to facilitate tracking sprints (more on that below).

 

Why are you doing this?

Well, for me specifically, I have ADHD, which comes with it executive dysfunction issues. Experience has taught me that I work best when I am accountable to some other human(s) in order to be at my best. I’ve had good luck with joining others’ writing sprints, but they aren’t always at the most convenient time for me, nor are they as consistent as I would prefer. 

 

As for Rasaar, she has expressed to me a similar desire for some structure with getting into the writing groove. We actually came up with the idea of running Shard writing sprints independently of each other, and by a stroke of luck, our preferred writing times line up very well despite being in wildly different time zones.

 

How exactly are you going to structure three hours of sprinting?

We’re planning to do multiple sprints per session in 30-minute blocks. We’ll probably do something along the lines of 25-minutes of writing to a 5-minute break. We can tweak the details as we figure out what works best.

 

This is a great idea, but Crazy Unicorn Lady, these times don’t work for me!

Worry not! The Discord bot we’re using for the sprints will be accessible to everyone, though will be limited to the #sprintspam channel, located near the bottom of the Discord channel list. If there are other times on any day that work for you and a few of your friends, you are more than welcome to hop onto Discord and utilize it! And while you may be familiar with Sprinto, we’ve renamed it to Cultivation to fit in with our snazzy little theme.

 

We’ve also created a new voice channel -- Creative -- for the sake of all writing and arting discussion. You can verbally coordinate sprints there and, if you like, chat during the rest minutes between sprints.

 

I’m in! But I can’t do it every weekday. Is it okay if I only join a couple days a week?

Of course! Join when it works for you. Barring holidays, vacations, and emergencies, we plan to keep a regular schedule so you know when to expect us there. (Having two mods running the event together will help there!)

 

Neat! I’m on the Discord now and I want to run my own sprints. How do I use Cultivation?

Cultivation is a fairly simple bot that has been programmed with basic commands. She can start a sprint, keep track of time, and even track your word count during the sprint! Bear in mind, though, she doesn’t work in every channel. Mostly, we expect member-run sprints to happen in #writing. Moderator-run sprints can occur in #writing or #chat-for-voice. Per the first update comment: all sprints should take place on the #sprintspam channel.

 

Bot Commands:

**Starting the sprint:**

_sprint 20 -- in 1 minute, start a 20-minute sprint

_sprint 20 in 5 -- in 5 minutes, start a 20-minute sprint

_sprint 20 now -- start a 20-minute sprint right now

(The maximum sprint time is 60 minutes.)

**Participating:**

_join -- join the sprint with starting word count of 0

_join 100 -- join the sprint with starting word count of 100

_wc 200 -- set your word count to 200 (the bot will ask you to do this after the sprint ends)

_= -- join the sprint with starting word count equal to the last word count you've given the bot

**Stopping:**

_forget -- you will not be pinged for the next sprint (otherwise, Cultivation will ping you for 3 sprints after the last you participated in)

_cancel -- stops the sprint you started

 

So, say you’ve got some people ready to write and you want to start a sprint. No problem! Simply go to the #writing channel in the 17th Shard Discord and start her up! Say you want to run a 15-minute sprint -- you’ll type “_sprint 15” into the chat, hit enter, and the bot will respond. If you don’t want the sprint to start immediately, that’s fine, too! You can instead type “_sprint 15 in 3” and a 15-minute sprint will begin in 3 minutes.

 

Now, you and everyone else needs to officially join the sprint with your word count. Cultivation makes it easy to track based on your current document count - just tell her where you’re starting at the beginning of the sprint. You’ve already got 1,257 words written in your current Work in Progress, so you’ll type “_join 1257” to set the starting point.

 

When the sprint is over, Cultivation will ping an alert and text marking the end of the sprint will appear on screen! Say now you’re document is up to 1,513 words - you’ll type “_wc 1513” into the chat. The bot will automatically calculate the number of words you’ve written and save the data.

 

Once everyone has input their final word counts, Cultivation will send a message to the chat with a ranking of every participant and their final results.

 

Cultivation’s command list will also be pinned to a message on the channel, so if you forget how to work her, the information will always be at your fingertips.

 

Happy writing, and we hope to see you in writing sprints on the Discord!

[Kaymyth]

UPDATE: So apparently the introduction of the Cultivation bot has been so popular that the sprint messages spammed the heck out of the #writing channel. We have created a new #sprintspam channel (located conveniently directly below #botspam) for all your writing sprint needs.

I shall edit my first post to bring all information up to date.

Also: feel free to use this thread to coordinate and collect sprint groups if you like.

[Garapheater]

Looking forward to joining. I need an excuse to write more. 

[Amira]

Is this still going on?

Edited March 29, 2022 by Amira

[+Ookla the Leafy]

On 3/28/2022 at 1:10 PM, Amira said:

Is this still going on?

Yes!

[ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ]

Is this still happening?

[Aeoryi]

39 minutes ago, ΨιτιsτηεΒέsτ said:

Is this still happening?

go to the 17S discord server, in #writing (you might ned to navigate to get there). Writing sprints happen every day at 12:00 pm (gmt-7:00)