Consensual reality

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

Your Dreamwidth or OpenID

connected to Dreamwidth

Your Pledge Level

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:

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:

GYWO 2026 Writers

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.

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Current Mood: sore

juushika

Title: Hangsaman
Author: Shirley Jackson
Narrator: Julia Whelan
Published: Books on Tape, 2021 (1951)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 210
Total Page Count: 552,500
Text Number: 2071
Read Because: fan of the author; audiobook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: The indicative slimness of a blurb: a 17-year-old girl in the 1950s leaves the claustrophobic domesticity of her family for her first year at an all-girls' college. But much of the novel happens in the protagonist's involved imagination or in the space between scenes. If this were anyone but Jackson, I wouldn't've had the patience for the excruciating minutiae of the first third; but it is Jackson, so the humiliating social anxieties are as beautifully figured as they are tedious. But the glimpses between, marginal and implied, disjointed and imagined and super gay, overshadow the text as it progresses, culminating in a remarkable final third. This isn't my new favorite Jackson, but that's hardly a fair critique; it really landed for me, and I can imagine a successful reread in a few years.

juushika

Title: We Were Witches
Author: Ariel Gore
Published: Amethyst Editions, 2017; Blackstone Audio, 2018
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 290
Total Page Count: 552,290
Text Number: 2070
Read Because: apparently this has been on my TBR since this 2018 Lesbrary review; audiobook and ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: The author's story of her college years as a young single mother. This is fragmented autofiction, cut through with magical realism and retellings; I enjoy the willingness to manipulate the structure to create connections and juxtapositions. But the "just the good bits" approach renders simplified and repetitive the feminist themes, to their detriment; it feels exaggerated for dramatic effect even though it's probably not, and I never quite found my foothold in it.

I started this on audio and finished it on ebook, and recommend the latter over the former; the short sections and atypical formatting come across better in text.

The fixation is hyper y'all. Headvids. Brain zoomies. Giddiness at good characterizations (and, for this particular fandom, the characters being ~an appropriate amount of Bastard~ 🤌).

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Rec-cember Day 11

vein by vein by

morian (2,415 words). Not Lestat being jealous of the sun XD (don't let my comment trick you into thinking it's crack fic, excellent voices in this)
Before he died and was reborn as a creature, not a man, Louis preferred the night. In this city that stretches and groans and howls to life at dusk, he had no reason to favour the sun. His business was the night. People like him, that is to say pimps and grifters, came to bed long after dawn and slept past noon.

It wasn't until he lost the sun that he learned it was something that could be missed.

Though even winters in New Orleans are mild and summer nights leave shirt collars clinging to sweat-slick necks like desperate hands, there is a special kind of warmth in sunlight on the skin. It reeks of childhood and the garden and the roof, of sunrise with his brother.

“I don’t miss the sun,” he will say to a jaded reporter on the balcony of his Dubai altar a hundred years from now. “The reminders it carries.” And it will be true then. But here is a man who ran through the street and nearly burned to death on the first morning he carried the dark gift. And here is a man who grieves his brother, not just one life lost but a thousand possibilities with it.

Fic, vid, and icon recs below :DD

( Btw I'm going to need a vampire to greet Daniel with 'so you're the divorce papers I've heard so much about' in s3, thanks. )

Current Location: on the bus home from work, I read porn on the busssss

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Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Here
Current Music: Chirpy Chirpy Cheep

marthawells

Some news:

* The Murderbot and fantasy novel Humble Bundle has returned for two days. The charity donation is still World Central Kitchen:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books-encore

* I'll be co-guest of honor with John Picacio at AggieCon 55 on January 30-February 1 2026 in College Station, TX.

https://www.aggiecon.net/

* Also you can preorder Platform Decay, the next book in The Murderbot Diaries, at whichever retailer you prefer, and it will be out on May 5, 2026. Published by Tor Books, cover art by Jaime Jones, edited by Lee Harris.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/platform-decay-martha-wells/8cf1662cf8bf8d15?ean=9781250827005&next=t

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I'm back at work for a couple of days, so throwing today's rec out early to avoid forgetting and ruining my ten (\o/) day streak.

Chosen by the very first hit of the Random Icon button... *drumroll*

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Rec-cember Day 10

Hawkeye / Thunderbolts
got me thinking she's so cool by

explosivesky (6,983 words). Cute, through and through. Since it's December and at one point presents are mentioned, do I get to put another notch under Christmas Recs?
“Yes, I know of Ikea,” Yelena says. “I have been all over the world. I know it is a furniture store.”

“Okay, but have you ever been inside one?” Kate pegs. She even leans closer, as if searching for the crack revealed by the question.

Yelena shifts between feet. “No,” she mumbles grumpily. “I have not been inside one.”

“They have meatballs. Swedish meatballs. They’re delicious. We can get you, like, maybe a bookshelf, or a corkboard, or - definitely a bedspread, I honestly thought that was a large decorative boulder for some reason–”

“You want to bring color into my room, Kate Bishop?”

Current Location: I'm on a boat motherfucker
Current Music: King Princess - Girls

fred_mouse

Well into 'it's not one thing after another, the damn things overlap' territory here

nominal deadline for my confirmation of candidature to have been submitted has passed without anything from my reviewers (one of three from our school has theirs)
Eldest's quilt has been somewhat abandoned, which is annoying me but I haven't had the cope
Instead I've been working on logistics of Youngest's quilt, which is very heavy in the planning stages (picture quilt, converting it from a photo)
Took a week at home on light duties last week, this week I'm back in the office. Did surprisingly well yesterday. Surgery site looks to have healed on the surface but the internals are still quite sore, so I'm still sleeping with the post-surgery bra.
Middlest and their partners have bought a house. They move in January. There was a messy blow up with the fourth housemate, who has since moved out, so they are learning how they fit together as a trio, and it sounds like things are going well. R's parents are providing lots of important support for the process.
Saw the nurse for follow up on Monday. They didn't like the wound support stuff I'd found in the pharmacy (because it is plasticky) and replaced it with a stiff fabric 'can be washed but blow dry it after' dressing that was so annoying/itchy I took it off last night (and it took off lots of ick; that area has an unsurprising build up of Stuff) and put the second piece of the wound support stuff on. That is so much better -- it is a clear plastic lattice that actually moves with the area, rather than digging in. Also, I'm not reacting to the glue.
My middle sibling and their partner are moving to Perth for two years. D has a job at UWA, K's job will allow 'remote' work from the Perth office. Amusingly, D described UWA as 'not restructuring' and Youngest laughed when reading that out. My comment was that from my perspective it has never not been restructuring, it is just the level that is changing. Plus, there was a leaked minutes from some meeting that suggested they were going to try and get a merger with Curtin, which I learned about when the Curtin Guild sent a 'not if we can help it' email out to all students. Pointed out to sibling that as they and I share a family name there is a non-zero chance they are going to get spotted as related.

Sooooo… if you read a spectacular fic but at the end see it has 880 whopping comments (🤯), is it still cool to add it to your rec list and assume there’s actually a person that hasn’t read it yet? Asking for a friend.

Toootally unrelated, I’ve been watching Welcome to Derry and my brain’s been having a great time being a bastard and making AUs where Claudia and Louis don’t make it to Europe but wind up in Derry instead. Bonus Armand in the sewers to be extra bastard about it.

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Rec-cember Day 9

Santa Clarita Diet
what all the troubles are for by

thegatorgood (1,961 words). Aw man I miss the Hammonds, and this had me laughing repeatedly.
Dad cleared his throat. "How's your foot, honey?"

"It's funny," said Mom, "but it reminds me of that time your mother took us out to that French restaurant right before we got engaged, do you remember? There was a cheese that tasted like this."

She chomped down on a toe. Abby decided it was time to check in with Eric.

"You did what?" he asked, when she told him about their latest run-in with the law.

Et tu, nerdus? "I don't get what's such a big deal about it. I mean, Dad pointed a gun at someone's head for the tenth time, but somehow I'm in trouble for grabbing a can of Pringles."

"Because," said Eric, his face in the Skype window so worried it was almost cute, "in west Texas pulling a gun out is like saying, 'Hi, I have a gun!' But if you pull a gun out and take stuff they put you in jail for years."

"It was just a bunch of junk food!"

"So what, Jean Valjean? Armed robbery is armed robbery."

Current Music: King Princess - Covers

theemdash posting in

Welcome again to everyone joining us for the Year-End Marathon and to everyone looking for a peek behind the curtain at GYWO. Each month volunteers post discussions about writing craft, life, and publishing. This rare public post is to give a taste of the full GYWO experience. We welcome you to interact, comment, and share your own experiences on the topic.

Tips for Getting Unstuck

No matter how much planning you do, there is always an opportunity for a writer to get stuck. Maybe your characters don’t agree with your plan, or you realize the plot twist is too obvious, or for whatever reason today this scene just doesn’t want to be written. Regardless of what’s actually going on, the bottom line is that you’re stuck in your writing and you need to not be stuck.

Let’s talk about some ways to apply a little grease and get your draft moving again.

( Tips for Getting Unstuck )

How do you go about getting unstuck while you’re drafting? Have you tried any of these strategies? And if you’re stuck right now and want to throw spaghetti at a wall, some of us will be around in the comments.

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tcpip

Last night I hosted the annual Murdoch University Alumni meeting for Melbourne at the Arts Centre with plenty of excellent and intelligent conversation, as would be expected at such an event (well-catered too, I must add). As part of the formal proceedings, we held a panel discussion on what Murdoch University meant and how it changed us. Our panel, quite remarkably, had graduates from every decade of the university's existence, including a foundation student, Dr. Trevor Hogan, and the remarkable story from Lem Bagout, who came to Australia as a refugee from Sudan; he now teaches physics.

For my own part (representing the 1990s graduates), I made the point that the radical parts of Murdoch's original educational objectives ("the Murdoch ethos") are now accepted and mainstream: encouraging mature-aged students and lifelong learning, allowing for part-time and external studies, encouraging interdisciplinary studies, and alternative entry based on experience. I also made a point of mentioning Bruce Tapper, who died a year ago on the day; not just because he was such a huge influence on my life, but in particular, because he was such a fierce advocate for Murdoch University's progressive education and egalitarian access.

In many ways, my alma mater sometimes stands in stark contrast with my employer, the University of Melbourne. Prestigious and conservative, the UniMelb is recognised as the top university in the country, which is really due to the excellent and well-funded research sector, standing on the shoulders of giants past. At UniMelb in the past fortnight, there have been two social occasions of note: an end-of-year potluck lunch for Research Computing Services (I brought along the Polish duck soup (Czernina), and an end-of-year social event for all of Business Services, this year held on campus at the Ernie Cropley Pavilion, a better location, and superior catering to previous years.

As another example of contrast, last Saturday I attended the Thangka Art Exhibition on Tibetan Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Development hosted by the Australian ReTeng Charity Foundation, associated with the Buddhist ReTeng Monastery in Donvale. I was somewhat surprised and impressed by the sheer number of dignitaries from the Melbourne Chinese community in attendance, and extremely impressed by the artworks on display. There was some juxtaposition of this aesthetic event, and the one attended in the evening, with Carla BL, at a little bar in Fitzroy to see a group of post-punk musicians (including my favourite local coldwave artists, Cold Regards) perform. For reasons of international travel, this is the end of EoY Melbourne activities - next stop, Santiago!

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: The Rookery

I had an epic, long, convoluted mess of a Wheel of Time dream last night - maybe because I saw a video from the costume exhibit on Insta right before bed idk - clearly this means today's fandom has already been chosen.

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Rec-cember Day 8

Wheel of Time
the children we once were by

QuickYoke (18, 083 words). Moiraine and Siuan, before the Tower. Both stories gripping tightly. Book!verse. Actually a prequel to a 60k fic, but I'll have to save that treat for later! Rec-Cember waits for no one ;)
When she turns a cramped corner in the crawlspace, a needlepoint of light greets her. It's small as a distant star in an otherwise ink black sky, but it is there. Moiraine shuffles forward and presses with all her might. The sound of a faint click, and an opening in the wall slides up to let her out.

Moiraine squeezes through and collapses on the other side, breathing heavily. When she sneezes, a plume of dust shivers off of her like a second skin. The floor beneath her is polished marble in a deep blue and gold pattern. Moiraine would recognise it anywhere. The air around her seems to hum, as though a glass had been struck with the flat edge of a knife and the sound is forever on the brink of fading. With dread rising in her throat, she looks up and climbs to her feet.

Early afternoon light streams through the windows of the throne room, tall and bursting in radiant patterns to mimic the rays that shine through them. Every surface is polished until it feels like standing upon a pane of glass or perhaps still water. The squared pillars and the arched midnight ceiling reflect perfect inversions of themselves down into the ground, so that it is less like walking through a chamber and more like being hung between the infinite space between mirrors; she is an insect suspended in a sea of abyssal amber.

The throne itself is ensconced atop a low-slung dais. Plain and unadorned but for an enormous disk of pure gold that enshrines the head of whosoever dares sit there in a halo. The chamber is empty, but still she wraps her arms around herself, glancing about for sign of any royal guardsmen lurking in the usual places. There are none.

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Current Mood: accomplished
Current Location: Jelaza Kazone

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Melissa McCarthy hosted SNL again, and as always she was hilarious. Figured I'd share the holiday themed one!

Watch on YouTube

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Rec-cember Day 7

ST Voyager
Crossing the Line by

orphan_account (1,686 words). Excellent Janeway and Seven of Nine in this. Set after Dark Frontier.
She has leaned on Chakotay before, and taken his arm more times than she can count. She has hugged Kes like a mother, even if Kes is beyond their reach entirely now. She has put a steadying palm on B’Elanna’s shoulder, and leaned over Tom at the controls; she has put her arm around Harry, and placed her hand on Neelix’s as he hands her a mug of coffee. She has collapsed against Tuvok before and wept, deriving comfort of her own from his willingness to be close.

All of this is different, of course. Different relationships, different boundaries. But, in the end, it is the same. She is Captain to these people, but in the Delta quadrant, Captain cannot afford to be synonymous with distance.

The difference with Seven is that she is distant from everyone besides Kathryn. That’s a responsibility.

Current Music: Nusantara Beat - Tamat

alias_sqbr

My therapist suggested I might be burning myself out working too doggedly on a game lately, I was dubious but whenever I feel stuck I've instituted a policy of taking a break not just until I feel up to working again, but until I have felt up to working on a different creative project for a while first. And the positive effects on my mental health and creativity, both generally and even regarding my game, have been significant!

And also it SUCKS. I have this straightforward option for immediate You Did A Thing dopamine right there and have to IGNORE it and find some other more vague, complex source. Excruciating! Especially since all creativity for me has to work around long stretches of Being Too Ill To Do Anything.

So yeah, after much thought about what creative thing I could be doing this time...I am writing this post haha.

Anyway. Life is not too bad! Had a bunch of annoying health stuff, nothing serious just tiring, but despite that I am successfully if intermittently working on a game! It's a remastered version of a game I released 7 years ago, because I'd run out of energy rather than being entirely satisfied with it. So I am happy to see something much closer to my original vision coming together. But making games is so sloooow it is taking forevver, even with the vast majority of it already done.

Also we got a benchtop dishwasher and it's been really good. We have to hand fill it with water because there was no way to get the plumbing to work, and it's too small to handle everything, but it still makes washing the dishes overall way less exhausting.

I'm currently playing the otome (romance) game Nor9 for the switch and it's pretty good, and am still having fun in Jack Jeanne fandom. A friend dragged me into Twisted Wonderland aka "what if there was a magic school full of hot boys inspired by the villains from various Disney properties" which is more fun than it has any right to be, I am not playing the game (gacha + phone game = no) but the plotty videos are on youtube and the ongoing anime is pretty good.

HMMM I feel there was something else but this will do!

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Current Mood: sleepy

+ Oh no I've pretty much eaten all my fancy chocolate :( I got a bag of random leftovers when I ordered a box for my mom for Christmas (Jentene På Tunet, BEST chocolate I've had in my life), and now there's only four pieces left. Rip.

+ I did pick up a packet of gf gnocchi yesterday, guess it's time for a very carb dinner :D

+ Decided to shuffle the list so I don't run out of femslash recs; today have a gen offering!

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Rec-cember Day 6

Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Jewish Christmas by

ryfkah (632 words). Happy dancing whenever I find a cute holiday themed rec for this ;D
Ensconced in the supply closet, Jake told Amy, grimly, “Nutcracker Ballet.”

Amy gasped, her hands flying to her mouth.

“I thought it was bad when I caught her standing for 20 minutes staring at the tree in the front office --” Jake grabbed for Amy’s hands. “Babe, you gotta help me here. I am wildly unqualified to salvage Rosa’s Christmas. I have one single Christmas card to play, and while I’m obviously always happy to play that card --”

Amy winced, and shook her head. “You know Rosa still hasn’t forgiven Bruce Willis for A Good Day to Die Hard. Giving her a very Die Hard Christmas is just going to fill her with additional rage.”

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Current Mood: happy

+ I'm stuck waiting in the car at the mall, and I am SO HEAVILY SCENTED ugh. It was barely a dab! Rituals has made an enemy of me this day.

Plus side I've picked up a couple of Christmas presents, plus a half off face cream for myself.

If I hang my clothes up to dry when I get home and start the bedding, then empty the dishwasher? Not a whole day wasted, look at me go.

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Rec-cember Day 5

Xena for Fanart Friday =)
"Gabrielle, do it." by gabbiemara @ reddit. Delectable vampire piece.

badass feminist icons by

artbykristele. Fun portrait of Xena and Gabi in a fighting pose.

Good pals by

rennerei. Legs around waist! Smooches! Aiaiaiaiaiii

Stay Down by laurenknight @ bsky. Xena being in charge, and Callisto is more than happy about it. So fun!

Current Location: the stupid parking lot
Current Music: Soccer Mommy - Yellow is the color of her eye

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+ Had vague plans of doing something useful today, but ended up playing an absurd amount of Crusader Kings 3 and the most recent update instead. CK3 having this reputation of being the murder incest simulator, meanwhile I spent two whole lives reading books, being beloved by all, and tending a garden. Zero intrigue until the game notified me I didn't have an heir and it would be game over... at which point my 57 year old chaste scholar dude was sent to slut his way across the kingdom. I died with eight legitimate heirs and several bastards lol.

After I've eaten I'll be setting off with my 22 year old, sitting on great stats and a pile of gold. By which I mean: studying and pilgrimages BOYAH. (I may not be the intended audience for this game? Or maybe that perception is warped by fun streamers? bc I want to write books and have a nice garden.)

+ Fingers crossed Pluribus drops before I get sleepy. It's really got a hold of me.

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Rec-cember Day 4

Gideon the Ninth
Skin Flick by

JeanLuciferGohard (2,618 words). Oh, this is pitch perfect in every way, and the visual language! So tasty.
Harrow undresses like somebody stripping an engine for parts, shedding layer after of black with a choppy, vindictive momentum. With all the eroticism of somebody prepping a taxidermy specimen. Like a case study of all possible conjugations of the verb “to flense”.

And, no, as it turns out; no, Harrowhark Nonagesimus is not, in fact, wearing anything under all that, nothing at all interrupting the faintly ridged shadow of her spine. There’s a lot of shoulder action happening, a lot of sweeping, shallow curves that look longer than they are, a lot of feral skinniness that you’d need a certain kind of palate to appreciate.

So call her a fucking sommelier, because Gideon’s palate is developed , apparently.

She whistles.

Current Music: Beatles

gywomod posting in

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.

File > Make a Copy

Share & export > Make a Copy

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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.

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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)

350 Days (Globetrotter)

Word Count Pledges

75K (Light)

150K (Modest)

200K (Basic)

250K (Moderate)

300K (Difficult)

350K (Herculean)

500K (Outrageous)

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.

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Current Mood: artistic
Current Location: non-smoking
Current Music: Smoke gets in my eyes

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Current Mood: optimistic

juushika

Title: Flesh Cartel
Author: Rachel Haimowitz, Heidi Belleau
Published: 2012-2014
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 1340 (75+75+76+75+75+93+68+68+68+94+70+101+74+68+75+58+58+56+56)
Total Page Count: 552,000
Text Number: 2051-2069
Read Because: searched for erotic horror at the library and, you know, yeah, this counts!, borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: Two brothers, one strong guy and one pretty boy, are kidnapped by the titular flesh cartel to be sold into sexual slavery. I unironically love that people are just publishing and my library is just licensing stuff that back-in-my-day would have been serial publications on LiveJournal. Short version: if you think you'd like this, it's pretty good; more psychologically astute, especially in the middle sections, than I was expecting, with uneven but incredibly consumable pacing that flags in the long resolution.

Long version, cut for content more than spoilers: ( Read more... )

juushika

Title: The Church of the Mountain of Flesh
Author: Kyle Wakefield
Published: 2024
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 445
Total Page Count: 550,660
Text Number: 2050
Read Because: searched for erotic horror at the library and, you know, yeah, this counts!, borrowed from Multnomah County Library and isn't it cool that they have some self-pub stuff these days
Review: God makes a deal with our grieving protagonist: if he rebuilds the church he destroyed, God will give him the body of a man. I almost DNF'd this in the opening chapters: the bombast of the speculative and the all-but-inevitable emphasis on visual descriptions in cosmic/body horror is A Lot & didn't really work for me. But once this gets claws in the ground, it gains momentum and readability. I have my criticisms (overlong and sometimes talky; I'm not totally sold on the success of the dual timelines; the dogged unlikability of the entire cast is a distinctive and occasionally obnoxious approach to characterization), but they're easily outweighed by what works not just well but exceptionally.

The trans stuff is generally where things get talky, but the holiness of the self, the disruptive and destructive and creative selfishness of selfhood, is a triumph of theme & genre. Even better for me, the central romance is exactly my thing, and here the excess becomes delight rather than detriment: when I reread, it will be to reach those scenes in the tent and church basement, to the climax of a love that glories in abjection. When the speculative works like this, making large and literal the reshaping of the self or the desire to tear into the heart of a loved one, it easily justifies the self-published first novel self-indulgences.

+ Armored worms and death-ball sponges among array of life newly documented from the deep sea. Some really cool pictures here.

+ Unearthing The Hidden History Of A Singular Trans Punk Zine.

+ Scientists discover sperm whale ‘phonetic alphabet’.

+ Do you really know Art Nouveau?. A very interesting journey into the political side of Jugend.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 3

Baldur's Gate 3
Karlach's Reviews by

ACrowsRockCollection (1k words). Boy oh boy do I love me a proper drabble, and this? Is ten quality drabbles in a row! Karlach ❤️❤️❤️
A hug:

Now, I want to be clear, that very first moment, where you're not sure, stick straight and skittery, that part sure isn't worth a damn.

But when ya melt into the person's arms?

And then, Gods, then they melt back? Because maybe they trust you or maybe you're just nice and warm, but the why don't exactly matter.

Because maybe when they melt back, maybe that's when you start thinking it is worth it all. Every bit of bullshit and all the gold in the gate too. For a moment, at least.

Five hundred million out of ten.

Oh, and

ManyATrueNerd started playing the game last month; he really has fun in the world and has gone in spoiler-free. If you’d like to follow a Let’s Play that drops an episode a week, you could do a whole lot worse.

Current Music: Bryony Claire - The moral panic of single women

rdm

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Current Mood: creative

gywomod posting in

Pledging for GYWO 2026 opens Dec 12, 2025. To become a member for 2026 you will need to:

Read our 2026 Pledges & Requirements post. (Coming December 12.)
Make a pledge via the GYWO 2026 Pledge Form.
(optional) Request membership to the GYWO Dreamwidth community and/or GYWO Discord server. (Links to both are included in the Pledge Form.)
Have patience! New members for 2026 will be added to the community on January 1, 2026.

The community is manually moderated and most of our moderators are in GMT -5, so please bear with us and know we'll add you to the community (and post 2026 tracking materials) as soon as possible on January 1st.

The image has the words 'get your words out' in black and '2026' in orange next to the GYWO logo, a hand-drawn chameleon clutching a pencil, with a pen, notebook, and book piled beside him. The background displays faded text reading 'get your words out' in multiple colors.

Comments are disabled on this post so the mods can focus on getting 2026 materials prepared, which will likely answer many of your questions. If you have a burning question, start by checking out our website, or you can email gywomod at gmail. (You can DM or leave a comment on the gywomod journal, but an email usually gets a faster response).

+ Lit my Christmas incense and drank some red soda today. It's pouring down outside but it still did the trick! Hopefully there's a dry morning soon so I can get some decorations out of the shed.

+ Many thanks for the lovely comments on the Holiday Love Meme, I was coming out of a bout of stomach flu combined with my period, and the tiny bumps of kindness throughout the days was highly appreciated ♥

+

BeautifulBooks does yearly videos on their favorite illustrated books, and is already out with their Myths & Legends and Children & Young At heart collections. If you're looking for bookish gifts this year - or just want to look at some art - might be a good one to check out.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️ ❄️
Rec-cember Day 2

Star Wars
Song for a fifth child by

Deputychairman (5978 words). A glimpse into Leia's life before and after the events of Force Awakens. Hands down my favorite Leia fic I've read so far.
Her daily life doesn’t change when Han dies.

He’d been gone for years, and she was used to that. He was there on a Comm link once a week, sometimes, and other times she wouldn’t hear from him for months, but she knew he was out there.

She feels the difference anyway. Like losing a tooth, or a bone in the ear - something from deep inside. It didn’t show, but you knew it was gone.

Current Mood: thankful
Current Location: Couch finally playing CK3
Current Music: Sevdaliza - Joanna

tcpip

A kind friend once introduced me as "This is Lev, he's one of those people who holds society together". A former partner, when I was juggling time and tasks, reminded me that every one of the tasks I was trying to arrange in some order was a voluntary role. This has been an approach for most of my life; even in my teenage years, I would take up volunteer roles, and at university, I helped start and organise some notable clubs. In my mature adulthood, this has continued over the decades, with several bodies of note (UniMelb PGSA, Linux Users of Victoria, Prosper Australia (Henry George League), the Melbourne Unitarian Church, all come to mind, for example). Currently, I'm the (volunteer) president of three non-profit incorporated associations, and that means being responsible for those groups, along with other voluntary roles, of course. "Responsibility" is a key term here; although the commitment is voluntary, once it is made, it is effectively a promise to others, and one that must be honoured.

Last weekend, for example, was the Annual General Meeting of the Australia-China Friendship Society. It was well-attended with excellent discussion, and we have three major projects in the near year: a concert with Shu Cheen Yu and the Lotus Wind Choir, an anti-racism survey, and an incredible trip to Guizhou and Sichuan is being organised. Another example is that next week there is (again) a contested election for the executive of the local ALP branch, entirely from the enthusiasm of members. As the Returning Officer, I have to arrange ballots and engage in the task of counting up the votes using the multi-member proportional representation with the affirmative action method. But that's not all; I'm also the convener of the Murdoch University Melbourne alumni chapter, and we have an end-of-year social event at the Arts Centre arranged as well, which will included a panel discussion of how Murdoch's educational objectives ("the Murdoch ethos", as it was called) transformed our lives.

In each of these activities, I find myself supported by excellent committee members and other volunteers. People of a like mind and disposition who see the worth of freely working together with others on matters of a shared interest. The Ancient Stoics called this "sympatheia" (συμπάθεια), the connectedness of individual parts to the whole community ("The universe made rational creatures for the sake of each other, with an eye toward mutual benefit based on true value and never for harm", as Marcus wrote), and even beyond as the Stoics saw their ethics as a subset of their physics; the interconnecting logos touches all things. In a more modern and less metaphysical sense, Hannah Arendt waxed lyrically about what she called "action", when a public would engage in activities together that went beyond the satisfaction of necessities ("labour") or the economic incentives of exchange ("work"), but rather with the motivation of shared understanding, which she interpreted as freedom in its fullest sense.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: The Rookery
Current Music: Albinoni, 12 Concertos, Op 9

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Current Mood: artistic

teigh_corvus

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Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: Raptor Haus
Current Music: Squirrel Nut Zippers