Last night at nearly midnight we launched this blog, and announced to the world our intention to write an entire novel in just 90 days.

I would like to take a moment to make it clear how we will measure our success or failure in this challenge.

Firstly, we think that a novel is at least 80,000 words. At around 250 words per page on a kindle that's 320 pages. We could probably get away with a little less, but if we're going to follow through on this challenge we want to do it properly.

80,000 words in 90 days is roughly 889 words per day on average. We expect some days to be lost in planning, or due to other life commitments (including this blog!) so in reality we'll be looking at closer to the thousand most days.

As well as merely having 80,000+ words we need to write a coherent story. If it doesn't hang together and compel the reader onwards right to the end, it isn't much of a novel. This isn't up to us to decide. This element is where our Amazon reviews will come in. We will put the book up on Amazon's Kindle Store at the end of this challenge (finished or not, with a clear indication on finished word count) and let the world decide if our efforts were in vain. We hope you will take part in critiquing our work at this point.

Finally, it has to be original. Dan and I both want to add something new to the literary universe and we hope to bring a unique story to the table that will keep you in suspense to the very end. Again, our readers will be our judges on this - and we welcome honest feedback.

I will post again at the end of today with a quick tickertape update on our word count with which you can approximate our progress (bearing in mind that we may lose some words during the final edit!). I will also put this number on our twitter feed.

Thank you for following our journey (and do let us know in the comments if you are an aspiring author, we'd love to know what others are up to - feel free to link to your own author's blog/website in comments).

Sean