Procrastination can be the death of any writing project or, in extreme cases, career. It’s so easy to fall down the rabbit hole of chores, social media, and “research” that we may never actually get around to doing what matters: the writing, the revising, the submitting.

One trick I’ve found to help me stay motivated is 'gamifying' my writing, revision, and submitting routines. The concept of gamification has taken off in a lot of spaces recently, with apps available to gamify many of our routines. Getting your chores done? There’s an app for that where you battle a dust-bunny gremlin to keep your house clean each month. Getting out of your comfort zone? There’s an app that challenges you to do things you wouldn’t normally try and awards you points.

There are a lot of writing apps, but a quick survey of the app store doesn’t show any that are particularly gamified, so I’ve come up with a method that is a little more old-fashioned: paper and tiny magnets on the fridge. I’ve created a checklist of all the things associated with writing. These are categorized into point values based on how important the item is. When I complete one, I mark it off with a tiny magnet. You could do this with pushpins on a bulletin board or on a list app, like Google Keep.

For instance, one-point writing tasks include “write anything.” This could be a draft of a cover letter, a gratitude journal entry, or a  follow-up email to a submission. Another one-pointer is “research submissions.” This means hitting my favorite blogs, like Horror Tree, or publishers’ Twitter feeds, looking for calls for submissions that interest me.

A three-point task would include finishing a short story or revising and editing a completed work. I give myself more points here because I’m working up closer to the submission process, which is where the big points are.

I give myself five points when I get “in the zone” and write on autopilot for an extended period of time. That’s huge for me. Others might decide to use word count for points: five hundred words in a day is one point, a thousand would be two points, etc.

Submitting work earns points depending on the length. Submitting a novel to a publisher or agent is worth way more (like ten points) than submitting a short story for anthology consideration (five points).

Finally, I do put receiving acceptances and rejections on the list, because those are like beating the end boss on a level, right? Even though they are out of my power, they are still a huge part of my routine and motivation to keep going. The most points go to a novel acceptance.

The ultimate objective is to beat your previous high score. I also set a baseline. For instance, any day over 15 points is good, but I’m trying to beat 21, which is my highest score. I set up small, tangible rewards for myself when I beat a high score, like a glass of good whiskey or a piece of fine chocolate. These keep me motivated and invested in the process. Have at it, and see if your writing routines don’t improve.