Strategies for Success: Join the Wars

Of course we’ve been bugging everyone to join the Team Championship (and will continue to do at every opportunity) for the fun of it all, but there’s actually more to it than that.  A lot of people find getting into the little competitions a thing that helps them drive their word counts up.

There are three main sorts of word wars: the Team Championship, the War with Seattle, and the individual nemeses from either of those two challenges.

Have you got your team assignment yet?  If not, you can talk to any leadership and they can help you out.  Once you know what marvelous mythical beast is yours, you can get in on the fun!  We’ve got people smack talking all over the facebook page and a little bit in the forums.

We’re also running team games during word wars at write ins, and that means more word wars, more chances to win swag, more chances to get a ton of words.  And you’ll have your teammates to cheer you on and your opponents to razz you on to victory.

Next is the word war with Seattle.  You don’t have to DO anything extra.  Everybody in the region is already taking part.  To check how we’re doing, there is a thread in the forum with a widget that shows who’s ahead.  You can razz Seattlites in that thread, or in the companion thread over in their forum.

Now, we’re fairly behind right now, but that’s all right.  Last year they were WAY further ahead!  And it’s all in good fun.  You can look at that widget and think, how many words would I have to write to raise that average?  Am I pulling us up or down?  Use that energy!

Finally, nemeses.  Having a nemesis is a direct way to compete with one or more individual people, and that can be a major motivator.  If you signed up for the Team Championship during the first few days, you were paired up with someone from each other team to fight.  If you signed up after that, you weren’t assigned a nemesis, but there’s no reason that you can’t find your own!  There should be a thread up in the forum in the next day or two to let people match themselves.

About twice as many people signed up from Seattle as Detroit to have a nemesis (no surprise, seeing as they have so many more people than we do) so there are some unmatched Seattlites looking for people to fight.  There’s a thread up in the forum by the Seattle ML who you can message to get yourself a nemesis.  I’m sure they would be very appreciative to have some more people to participate.  I messaged them yesterday to ask for FOUR additional nemeses, but I think they’re scared of my crazy self because I haven’t heard back yet.

All of these things are ways to add a little external competition into what is primarily a personal challenge.  If you’re the sort of person motivated by competition, this is a great way to get your word count up.  If it’s not, it can still just be good fun, especially if you naturally contain high levels of sass.