Announcement Time!

Hey, Ch1Con!

Here they are. The big announcements we’ve been hinting at all over social media for the past month. THEY ARE FINALLY HERE (which is fantastic, because we’re tired of holding back the goods).

Looking at ye olde website, you may have noticed that something is different. This is because our logo and website have gotten a facelift! Check out that shiny new tomato. It’s so fresh we’ve had to resist the urge to eat it.

So, why the redesign? (Great question, Random Human!) Besides the fact that we’d had that old (kind of ugly) logo for far too long and the Ch1Con tomato deserves nothing but the prettiest of paintjobs, we also wanted a new logo in conjunction with this new era in the life of the conference.

Which is to say, we are SO CRAZY EXCITED to announce that the Chapter One Young Writers Conference is now partnering with the Teens Can Write, Too blog!

The entire Ch1Con team adores John (except for maybe Julia) and the work he’s done on his blog (definitely including Julia), so we can’t wait to work with TCWT.

What does this mean for Ch1Con? (Wow, you’re so great at questions today!)

Ch1Con will continue doing what it’s doing, which means the 2015 conference will still take place Saturday, August 8th outside Chicago and we’ll continue to put on our monthly Ch1Con Chats on Youtube. However, on top of these things, all the Ch1Con team members will also be writing for the TCWT blog (and Julia and Kira will be editing!) and we’ll collaborate between the two blogs to bring you contests, giveaways, and all kinds of helpful new teen writing-oriented content.

TCWT will also be expanding what they’re (we’re?) up to, so make sure to check out the announcement post over on that blog as well to learn about the rest of our new developments! (Theme months? Online write-ins? ONLY BY READING THE OTHER POST WILL YOU KNOW FOR SURE.)

And on top of THIS (we know; it seems impossible for there to be even more excitement), Ch1Con’s got a few other announcements to make.

We’ve got new team members!
Say hello to our new Master of Marketing Patrice, Tumblr Expert Emma, and Creative Consultants Ariel and Aisha! These ladies are amaaazing. Welcome to Ch1Con, ya cool cats! (You can read the updated team bios on our Meet the Team page here.)

#Ch1Con Twitter Chats!
Beginning next week, every other Wednesday at 9:30 PM EST, the Ch1Con team will host a Twitter chat on all things writing and being young writers using #Ch1Con. JOIN US.

Weekly NaNoWriMo Word Sprints!
Every Saturday for the rest of November, we’ll be hosting a one hour word sprint at 1:00 PM EST! Join us on Twitter using #Ch1ConRUN.

Ch1Con team members fight to the death! (Ish.)
The Ch1Con team will be trying a teambuilding (team-destroying?) exercise Saturday, November 22nd at 3:00 PM EST in which we open a Google Doc (visible to your lovely eyes) with the barest of writing prompts and have one hour to write a story. One story. Without communication.

Who will learn to write together? Who will write against the rest of the team? Who will actually manage to stay on task? Only time will tell.

Weekly Writing Prompts & Blog Features!
Beginning next week, every Friday we’ll post a writing prompt, and your mission (should you choose to accept it) will be to send us your responses so we can feature our favorite(s) each week on the blog!

Aaand we’ve got one last big thing coming your way. But we’ll let you wait until tomorrow for that one. 😉

We’re so excited about all these things! Again, make sure to check out John’s announcement post on Teens Can Write, Too, reminder that November’s Ch1Con Chat on NaNoWriMo is TONIGHT (info here), and we’ll talk to you tomorrow!

Love,

The Ch1Con Team

PS. Love the new tomato as much as we do? Here’s a nifty badge you can display on your sidebar or use as a profile picture or basically in absolutely any way you see fit.