Communities & Challenges

Challenges and Communities for Writers

	ROW80 A Round of Words in 80 Days is to quote – “the writing challenge that knows you have a life”. 4 Rounds per year, set your own writing goals, publish them to a blog, and checkin every Wednesday and Sunday. A Mr Linky widget provides other ROW80 participants with your own posts, and you can follow them around the web also. Timeframes : 4 Rounds a year of 80 days. Twitter Hashtag : #ROW80 Link: ROW80
	PlotWriMo Plot Writing Month is held on the Plot Whisperer blog in December each year, immediately after the marathon effort of NaNoWriMo. Martha Alderson, as author of a writing craft book, “The Plot Whisperer” hosts daily plotting prompts on her blog over the PlotWriMo month. There is also a series of previous posts on plotting that you can read through, a series of youtube videos, and naturally, she recommends buying and reading her book. Note – I am including this because I like the concept of spending a dedicated month or two on plotting and planning – hopefully before writing the first draft – but at this point in time, the PlotWriMo challenge doesn’t offer the signups and community that other challenges do. Timeframes : December 1st – 31st, annually Twitter Hashtag : #plotwrimo Link: PlotWriMo
	NaNoWriMo National Novel Writing Month takes place every November, and has done so with write-ins, community support forums, local chapters and challenges for many years. Nowadays, NaNo is international, and offers sponsors, certificates for winners, T-Shirts and merchandise, local co-ordinators and events, widgets to put on your website showing your participation, and supplementary challenges such Script Frenzy and a Young Writers Program. Timeframes : November 1st – 30th, yearly. Twitter Hashtag : #nanowrimo Link: NaNoWriMo.
	Camp NaNoWriMo Camp NaNoWriMo takes place over June and August. Join up to be assigned a camp with six writers in it. Register a book for June, and another for August. During those months you must complete 50,000 words on the book, and input your wordcount. Support from campmates inspires you on. You can use your same ID as from NaNoWriMo. Timeframes : June and August, yearly. Twitter Hashtag : #campnanowrimo Link: Camp NaNoWrimo
	NaNoEdMo National Novel Editing Month – Not as popular as NaNoWriMo (but it should be, perhaps) is NaNoEdMo. This runs in March each year, designed to provide a full month of community support (certificates for winners, municipal liasons for some locations) in editing the first draft novel created during NaNoWriMo or a personal 30 day writing project.Participants signup to doing 50 hours of editing during the month. Timeframes : March 1st – 31st, annually, 50 hours Twitter Hashtag : #nanoedmo Link: NaNoEdMo
	NaBloPoMo & BlogHer National Blog Posting Month is held every November via the large BlogHer blogging community. If you’re after another helpful community and not wanting to attempt a novel in 30 days, perhaps posting a blog post every day for the month might do the trick. Blogher is a blogging network formed for women bloggers, running conferences for bloggers, providing blog post streams in many categories, promotional and community aspects. Timeframes : November, Annually Link : Blogher NaBloPoMo
Visit The Write-Brained Network	The Write-Brained NetworkNew writer’s network built on Ning. Community, groups, individual pages, blogs, chat…Link: The Write-Brained Network
	The Insecure Writer’s Support GroupThis group has formed as a blog hop using Mr Linky widget for signup, from Alex Cavanaugh’s blog. If you signup, you commit to posting on your writing every first Wednesday of each monthTimeframes : First Wednesday, MonthlyLink: The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
	Absolute Write Water Cooler The Absolute Write Water Cooler provides a large community of writers, and many forums and challenges. For novelists, the latest challenge commencing November 2011 is the W1S1 Novel Challenge – a challenge to write a novel and submit it. Link: AW Novel Challenge
	Blogging from A to Z April ChallengeBeginning in 2010, another April Challenge will be run in 2012. For 26 days during April, you are challenged to publish a blog post beginning with A, ending in Z as a theme. This challenge also has a good lot of writers within it, and 2011 saw a couple of ebooks published out of the blog posts. Another interesting challenge and community.Timeframes: 26 days, AprilLink: Blogging from A-Z
	Post a DayIf you have a wordpress.com blog (like this one) you can participate in the Post A Day meme. There is also a Post A Week– which I’m doing.All you have to do is swipe a badge, and add the tag ‘postaday’ to your blog postLink: Post A Day badges for 2012 at The Daily Post.
	Writers’ Platform Building CampaignsRach Writes runs an annual or twice-yearly campaign for writers, where you can join up to meet and support other writers in your genre, announce blogfests, book launches etc, and do some writing challenges.Links: Writers’ Platform Building Campaign page Watch the regular blog posts for more information and announcements for each campaign (as of Feb 2012 we are up to the Fourth campaign, running through to mid-March).
	Writer unBoxedThe website offers many articles for writers. Sign up for the newsletter for more. And the Facebook page is a thriving community.Links: Writer Unboxed website. Join up on the RSS feed, and join the newsletter from here. Facebook
	WANATribeThe newest creation of Kristen Lamb’s #myWANA concept, this Ning based community offers genre tribes, blog posts for members, and discussion forums.Twitter hashtag : #myWANA Link: WANATribe.
	World Literary Cafe.A community supporting authors with promotional opportunities for indie authors, forums and campaigns to help with social media.Twitter hashtag: #WLC #WLCAuthor Link: WLC