On November 1, over 1 million writers will take on the challenge of National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, where they will partake in the ambitious goal of trying to complete 50,000 words in 30 days. Of those writers, less than 20% will reach their goal. Then again, on January 1st, millions more aspiring authors will take on the New Year's resolution of completing their first book. While there are no widely available stats on the completion rate here, if you have ever been to the gym in January, and then again in February, I think you can probably extrapolate how many writers complete this goal.

Quill Loop was born to help combat this problem. Having goals is important, especially when it comes to something like writing. It puts a stick in the sand and gives you an achievable outcome to be proud of. The problem, however, with writing a novel is that just a first draft of a novel takes a long time (between 6 and 12 months on average) and the average human's attention span is just not that long.

That's where gamification comes in. Gamification is a powerful tool when it comes to building effective habits that stick, and the same is true of writing. One of the most common gamification strategies is the streak. By enticing people to come back again to keep building a streak, you are laying the foundations that will waterfall into a daily routine.

This is the first way that Quill Loop tries to keep you on track. We track your streak each and every time you write, and we show that on your Author profile where you can compete with your friends, and nudge them when they fall behind. Because we strongly believe the best way to complete a novel is by building a strong routine that eventually becomes a habit.

But let's discuss the elephant in the room, and that is what happens when you miss a day? The problem with the streak is the moment the streak is broken, be it because you're sick, you're on vacation, or you just can't do it today, it's demotivating to come back to the number one.

That's why Quill Loop does things differently. We track two different statistics about your writing: your daily writing goal, and whether you wrote that day at all, even one word. But why track both?

You're going to have good days and you're going to have bad days. On good days you might write 2000 words in a single session, and on bad ones you might struggle to drag yourself to the keyboard. Quill Loop wants to reward your bad days, for making a point of even typing "Hello". So the moment you enter that first word into the editor, your streak is protected, no questions asked.

Writing a novel is a marathon, not a sprint. You're going to start the race strong, with tons of energy and light in your eyes, but as you see the starting line disappear, with no finish line in sight and you start to feel that ache in your legs, you're going to want to quit, to give in to the temptation of sitting down. After all, what do you have to lose? That's where we come in. We are the friend at the side of the track with some water and a prickly but kind "hey, you gotta finish this, you know it'll be worth it at the end!" and when you get there we'll be waiting for you at the finish line celebrating right alongside you, the author.

And remember, the only difference between a dreamer and an author is the tap of keys or the stroke of a pen.