Writing Wednesday: Camp Nanowrimo

I've spoken before about how amazing Nanowrimo is as a writing community, and as an activity.  It is brilliant, and I love it everso much - for those who are unfamiliar with the concept, it's writing 50,000 words in the month of November: http://nanowrimo.org/

If you like writing, I cannot recommend it a lot.  I've got a lot out of the community, everyone is super friendly - you get to meet fellow writers online and there are meet ups.  And at the end of the month you've hit 50,000 words, and even though they may not be high quality - that's the entire point of it! It gives you a chance to mess around and do fun things, to experiment, and if it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out but you've at least had the practice!

Well, that's in November.  But for in the summer, there is CampNanowrimo which works similarly - but you set your own word count goal, and you are in a cabin - a group of people who can be random, share your interests (age, genre, word count), or you can make a private cabin with your friends. So you get to talk to people, get to work on your own goals (CampNanowrimo is set up for you to be able  to work on editing, scripts, graphic novels, research, crafts or whatever you would like - whereas Nano itself is looking at fiction) and then there are a lot of very helpful writing resources.

And then *drumroll*  there are the forums:

Here you can find cabin mates, talk, and give feedback (and there is still access to the main forums which has a wider range of forums). 

Here are my top 5 forum threads from Camp Nano 2016 - if you're looking later on, they may be gone, but you will find other fantastic threads instead.

5 Favourite Line(s)/Scene(s) so far:  Here people can share their favourite work so far, and get support and compliments!

4 Unfortunate Google Searches!:  People sharing those searches that they've made, which are...awkward to say the least.  If you've been writing any kind of topic, you know what this means - murder methods seem to be a particularly common issue. 

3 Say Something Kind About The Excerpt Above You: I just love the concept here - everyone supporting each other and being really kind, encouraging each other.  Writing is hard and can be lonely, so community is fantastic

2 Camp Dares: Stuck on your writing? Take a look here for suggestions of what to write

1 Nanoisms:  The excellent typos that happen as people write.  These are hilarious.  Definitely my favourite part of Nanowrimo as a whole

Go poke around the forums, and feel free to link to anything interesting you find!

Writing Wednesdays: Trello

Just a quick entry today, to introduce you to a fantastic way I've found of keeping track of writing projects.  If you're anything like me, you've got dozens of writing projects on the go at once, and that means you need a system to remember what you're writing, what the deadlines are, what the plot is, and who the characters are.

Introducing Trello:

 

You can make multiple boards, I've taken a picture of my writing board here - and for each board, you can include multiple lists - in this I've got spaces for stories I've got an idea for, those I have planned, those I have started writing, those I have finished, and those that are edited. 

Next stage along are cards (those white rectangles) which you can drag between lists.  You can have headings and give them colour coded tabs.  If you click on the card to open it, you can include checklists, images, deadlines, and other attachments.

 

This is a quick page I put together for a project I'm working on at the moment.

This is all great because it lets you visualise your project.  As well as overviews like the one shown above, you can also make ones for each individual project, or share links with a team.  Or for anything else you need to keep track of. This Lifehacker article sets out how it can be used, and this template by Reddit user tleisher can help you to get started.

If this is all just a bit too fancy, and you just want a list you can tick off to keep track of things, try using Workflowy (that's my referral link there, and if you use it you get 500 items a month rather than 250, and I get extra too).  I tend to do my first planning in workflowy, and add more detail in trello.

Hope one or other of these is of use to you.  What programmes do you use to plan your writing?