How It Started

In October 2004, I wanted to undertake a specific writing goal:  I hoped to write the first draft of a novel in one calendar month.  As I prepared for this endeavor, I thought it might be nice to gather other romance writers who also wanted to accomplish a specific writing goal.  So began the WritingGIAM communities, then known as Writing Goal In A Month.

A dozen writers accepted my challenge and to improve our communication, I created a Yahoo loop.  We announced our monthly goals, and at the end of each week, we recapped our progress.  When October ended, we were having so much fun as a group that we decided to extend it indefinitely.  Since then, we’ve added five more goals loops and serve over 300 writers.

Amy Atwell, WritingGIAM Founder

WritingGIAM Today

GIAM has come to stand for the cornerstones of our groups: Goals, Inspiration, Amity and Motivation. We’ve expanded over the years, thanks to our many amazing members who volunteer their time and/or contribute a little cash now and then to keep our site running. With such wonderful support, our many GIAM resources continue to be offered freely to all members.

Our membership has grown to over 300 and includes published and unpublished writers of many different genres. Our members are published by Amulet Books, Astaea Press, Avalon, Balzer & Bray, Bantam, Barbour Publishing, Bell Bridge Books, Bellfire Press, Berkley, Bethany House, BookStrand, Carina Press, Cerridwen, Cobblestone Press, Crimson Romance, Crown, Desert Breeze Publishing, Dorchester, Eirelander, Ellora’s Cave, Entangled Publishing, Eternal Press, Forbidden Publications, Grand Central, Harlequin, Highland Press, HQN, Kensington, Medallion, Mills & Boon, Montlake, NAL, Pocket Books, Red Rose Publishing, Red Sage, Samhain, Siren Publishing, Sourcebooks, Thomas & Mercer, Turquoise Morning Press, WestSide Books, Wild Rose Press, Wings ePress, and more. Many of our members are also self-publishing their books. We write romance, paranormal, urban fantasy, dystopian, young adult, mystery, children’s books, science fiction, inspirational, GLBT and women’s fiction.

Our community is fashioned like a college campus. Each member is subscribed to one of our GIAM goals groups. These groups are usually capped at 60 people. Think of this group as your dormitory—the writers on these goals groups see the most of each other and often form strong bonds over time.

Once subscribed to a goals group, GIAMers have the option of joining one or more of our writing challenge groups. These range from the “slow but steady” 100×100 group (100 words for 100 days) to a Tour de Force group (50K words in a calendar month).  GIAM also periodically offers classes and/or hosts open forum discussions on writing craft, social media, marketing ideas and more. Often these classes are taught by members who wish to beta test their class material. We also offer a chat lounge, great for joining other writers for writing sprints. We have an open Facebook group for sharing our releases, blog appearances and more, and we create a daily newsletter from our traffic on Twitter.

This website acts as a hub for our many activities, a central information site and also a place for our members to post information on their latest book releases. Our blog (coming soon!) will be dedicated to inspiring fellow goal-oriented writers.

Sound like a group you would like to join?  Learn how: