Lore & Lilac
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Sign-up open 1–30 November

The Lilac Garden: grow a lilac, one sentence at a time

A gentle writing season for November. Choose one goal for a book, and a lilac of your own grows from seed to full bloom as you work towards it. No leaderboards, no public numbers.

Sign-up is open now, and the season runs from 1 to 30 November. Join from any book's Stats page in the studio; each year, sign-up opens on 1 October.

Buds forming

Try it: move the slider to see a lilac grow. In the studio, yours follows your own progress.

How it works

Four steps, at your own pace

  1. Choose your goal

    Pick one goal for one book: words written, scenes revised in a revision pass, or new story-bible entries. Start from 10,000, 25,000 or 50,000 words, or set your own number. Revising and world-building bloom just as fully as drafting.

  2. Work in November

    From 1 to 30 November, in your own time zone, the lilac grows with your progress: seed, shoot, leaves, buds, full bloom. Thirty small plots show the days you worked on the book. Quiet days stay plain soil and never wilt anything. With a words goal you can turn on a small “Today's pace” note — the words that keep you on track today — and stop showing it with one tap.

  3. Private by default

    Your lilac and your numbers are visible only to you. There's no shared garden, no ranking and nobody to compare yourself with. If you'd like to show your lilac to a friend, make a share card: an image you save or share yourself, with your numbers and the book's title left off unless you tick them.

  4. Keep it

    When the season ends, your lilac stays with your book as a keepsake, at the stage it reached. Nothing resets.

Kind by design

What the season won't do

  • Rank writers against each other, or show your numbers to anyone else
  • Wilt, shrink or reset your lilac after a quiet day
  • Nudge you with reminders: the season sends no emails at all
  • Treat revision or world-building as less than drafting — every kind of goal blooms
  • Read your writing with AI: the lilac grows from simple counts of your own work

Plant your seed for November

Create an account, bring your draft, and choose a goal from the book's Stats page. You can change your goal, or leave the season, until 30 November.

Create an account Open the studio