For all our writing friends, have you heard of the BIC HOK TAM mantra? It stands for "Butt In Chair, Hands On Keyboard, Typing Away Madly," and it's the theme song of the BIW, (book-in-a-week) group.

BIW is a program you sign up for free and dedicate one week each month to writing away madly. The idea is to throw your internal editor out the door and write, write, write during that week. Some folks who like to plot (like me!) do all our plotting prior to the BIW time and then we use our outline to write the various scenes and/or chapters we've selected to work on during that week. Non-plotters "write into the mist" as Deb Courtney calls it and they do just as well. It's all up to your writing style which route you take.

It's free to participate in BIW but you do need to sign up/register. Go to the BIC HOK TAM web site, to sign up. You then email the list and tell them how many pages you plan on writing during the BIW week. It's all on the honor system. No one reviews or critiques your writing. This is just a way for you to set writing goals for yourself and have a group behind you to hold you accountable.

During BIW, every day you write the list and tell them how many pages you actually wrote that day. A page=250 words.

Visit the site and, if you're interested, join today and start participating on the monthly BIW challenges (it's always the first full week of every month) and you have to have your goals posted before the challenge starts if you want to participate. Email me if you have questions. I've been a member of BIW for a while and wrote about it at the CCF site.