Inevitably, around this time of year, people roll out their lists of New Year’s resolutions–these lists might include items like “Imma lose weight!” or “Imma quit dranking!”

Well, I have one more item to add to all of our lists: “We should be writing.”

It’s inspired by Mur Lafferty’s podcast, I Should Be Writing, and if you follow it or not, you might’ve heard of the Magic Spreadsheet.

It’s a self-calculating Excel spreadsheet that awards points for how many words you’ve written in a day (1 point for 250 words, 2 points for 500 words, etc.) and how many days you’ve continued writing (1 point for 1 day, 2 points for the second day, etc.).

The goal being that by writing 250 words daily, you would write over 90,000 words in a year, surpassing the industry standard of 80,000 words for a novel.

I’m a competitive person by nature (I think most people are), and by seeing the points I’ve scored for each month, I feel a need to score more points on subsequent months. It reminds me of an RPG, or something–that I’m actually “leveling up” as a writer as I accumulate more points. I started writing with the Magic Spreadsheet last March, and I’ve been the most productive that I’ve ever been. Hands down!

So if one of your New Year’s resolutions is increasing your productivity as a writer, you should try downloading and using this spreadsheet. It’s definitely helped me maintain a more consistent writing routine.

Happy New Year, Everybody! May this year be a more productive writing year for us.

Write your heart out!

Photo credit: BazaarBizarreSF / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND