Writing Club

Update 2024-09-05: The writing club is underway! I'll keep this post updated to act as a hub for any further WC related materials.

Writing Club posts:

I've never been in a writing club but I'm interested in trying to get one going. Would anyone else be interested in giving it a go? I don't have to lead it, but will do so if no one else wants to.

What I'm picturing:

Monthly check-in cadence
Everyone sets a personal goal, and then talks about how they did the previous month
No pressure other than what you want to take on to motivate you
Maybe some "assignments" in the vein of a creative writing class
I volunteer to send members reminder DMs to motivate them :)

I was thinking I'd just start with this post - come up with a goal for myself to accomplish by end of June, and then check back sometime in the first week of July. If that sounds interesting to you, feel free to join in and comment with your goal, and any details you want to add.

PS Also very open to writing club discussion meta. I'm new to this so wide open to suggestios, comments, critique, etc.

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29 comments

Slightly off-topic but feel free to use our collaborative text editor for sharing and working on drafts: https://pads.slrpnk.net
- Thank you, that's very much on-topic I'd say! I'm sure this will come in handy 👀

Almost a year ago I started trying to write solarpunk fiction and got daunted by the amount of research I needed. Writing scifi had always meant extrapolating current trends and pointing out problems. To do solarpunk I had to be able to offer solutions and that meant lots and lots of reading to learn from the folks who've been talking about and trying out alternative ways of doing things (from agriculture to infrastructure to anarchy) and thinking through their answers.
For awhile I did a worldbuilding art/essay project focusing on very small glimpses of a solarpunk future, trying to emphasize things like creative reuse, industry, and seasons/weather that didn't show up much in solarpunk visual art. The narrow focus helped a lot.
I think I'm finally comfortable trying to write something, though instead of a short story I'm working on a campaign for the solarpunk TTRPG Fully Automated, where the players are on a treasure hunt for tons of industrial waste which were illegally dumped sixty years before. The waste is valuable because it's a useful input in the production of geopolymers, and the stakes are high as the largely-abandoned rural town they're searching is in the process of being deconstructed and rewilded, so nobody else is likely to notice it in the future.
I've had a lot of fun building a wide swath of locations, communities, and means of travel for the players to possibly explore, along with the rough outline of the decades-old conspiracy and coverup murder.
My goal is to build out the characters, build out the past/conspiracy, and to start seeding people and locations in the present with clues for that mystery.
- Oh cool! Truly, I can't wait to hear more about this. I'll add a link to your comment in the main post.

Will you be doing it here? I love stuff like this. I'm not in because I'm not a writer, but I used to be part of a songwriting club that operated like this. It really helped with both my craft and motivation and the feedback was amazing.
Good luck, and I hope this turns out amazing!
- Thanks for the words of encouragement! That is indeed heartening to hear.
  Yes for simplicity and visibility I thought here would be best. Maybe a side community if it starts to suck up too much of the oxygen in the room, but that's counting chicks before they hatch.

I have a couple writing projects I've been working on and would love a collaborative space to both motivate and inspire eachother :)
Do you think we would share our writing in addition to talking about the process? It could be opt in for people who aren't as comfortable sharing their actual writing.
- I have a couple writing projects I've been working on and would love a collaborative space to both motivate and inspire eachother :)
  Heck yeah, that's what I'm about.
  Do you think we would share our writing in addition to talking about the process? It could be opt in for people who aren't as comfortable sharing their actual writing.
  I would love to deep dive into someone else's writing and really nerd out on the details, but I bone-deep understand the trepidation of baring your work-in-progress writing to another person or people.
  So yeah, encouraged, but not necessary IMHO. I'm fine going by the honour system if someone just wants to talk about what they're doing, but not ready or willing to show it.
  What do you think?
  
  That sounds great! Definetly isn't mandatory, just a nice option for people who want to be able to talk about nitpicky details and get specific feedback. Maybe if there are enough people we could do a voice chat or something.
  I'm part of a discord based book club that has weekly voice chats & they're definetly a nice addition.
  I might be getting too far ahead of myself with ideas though lol I'm just spitballing, I'm excited for anything you decide to do, glad you had this idea :)

Oh an idea: we could make a writing club community where people can post about process and post stories to get feedback. Then there could be a pinned weekly/monthly post that has goals and other general discussion and well as letting people say if they want motivational DMs
- I like this idea a lot. I was wondering about how to organise everything in one post, and it's probably a recipe for disaster after a certain size haha. A specialised community is a good solution for that.
  I do want to see how things go here for a bit before getting too fancy, since this is a pretty quiet community, and also my motivation has a way of fleeing me as soon as Monday rolls around hehe, so I don't want to take on too much too quickly.
  
  Makes sense, a new community probably wouldn't be necessary at the start & this community could probably use the extra traffic anyways :)
  Maybe a way to organize it within the post is having topic specific comments? You could even link to the comments within the main body of the post.
  For example you could have a comment that says: comment here for dm motivation. Then people can reply to that specific comment and it'll all be nested. Things might get tricky if the post gets too much activity, but I get the feeling it will probably be a small group :)
- Sounds like a great idea! There could be a monthly or quarterly post to encourage people to link (or quote, if not too long) the various things they want feedback on in the response comments.
  I did in a previous writing community run into the issue that people would, when somebody discussed general writing approaches, point back to their own previous feedback posts and find flaws in the posts to try to "prove" to them their more general thoughts on writing approaches was wrong. Which in my opinion scares people away from daring to post their work, when it later comes back at them in a more general discussion.
  Therefore, I would only request people stick with "3. What happens in feedback or critique requests posts stays in these posts" which I suggested as a rule for that reason.
  
  Super good point! Also I don't know if you saw, but we've been doing the writing club in this community. I think there are 3 or 4 of us who have been consistently checking in, but we have had a few people chime in just for the month. I can link to it if you haven't already seen those posts.
  So far it has luckily been a very positive and motivational space :) no one getting weird and nitpicky, mostly just encouraging eachother to keep up with writing
  
  The legend returns! Sorry I'm just seeing this now. I 100% I agree with everything you've said. As @hazeebabee@slrpnk.net said, luckily things have been cozy and chill enough in the monthly posts, that we haven't actually needed to enforce any rules.
  I like your idea about the author actually highlighting what they want feedback on. I'll try to remember to include that in the next monthly post.
  I think it would be nice if we could get even more people giving feedback, even if they aren't participating in the goals (gods help me, I'm asking for critics lol), but I guess that's just general community building, and hopefully will come with time.

So my goal is to have a detailed (enough) map drawn up for the fictional land where my story takes place. Not the whole world, just the immediate area encompassing a midden situated in a mountain range, to a nearby outpost.
I recently finished reading A Wizard of Earthsea, and the map and the world inspired me to get back to this story I've been mulling around for over a year - and what better start than a map! :D
As a stretch goal, I would like to connect scenes between two characters: 1) A scavenger of info tech at the middens, to 2) a soldier to a diminishing empire being held captive at the nearby outpost.

I'm so dang interested it's crazy
- Can I put you down for a monthly goal? ;)
  
  Yes pls

I want to have finished my full cast , series outline and pilot script for my main project by August
I want to write at least a 2k word piece of fanfiction
I want to find a writing partner for an experimental project, to see what it's like collaborating in that way
- Thanks for the deets, and wow so much! I can't wait to hear more about it. A script! That's so cool!!

My goal this month is to finish the scenes I've started for my book (I have 3 very rough drafts), and to do some more adjusting to my outline.
My less specific goal is to spend more time focused on one project, rather than jumping around to different stories every time I write.
- Nice, that sounds very ambitious to me, but I'm also nowhere near even attempting a book haha. So do you envision getting your 3 rough drafts to a second draft, or even final draft stage?
  Maybe I'm mixing up "scenes" and "drafts" here, though.
  ... spend more time focused on one project, rather than jumping around to different stories every time I write.
  This is painfully relatable. I haven't tried it for writing, but for my day job, I've had some small luck with the Pomodoro method.
  I'm excited to hear more about how both your goals go!
  
  So when I write, I typically start by getting inspired about an over arching story. I make up an outline, then to fill it in I start with scenes that feel very important or that I can really visualize. I then write those, modify the outline if necessary and write more scenes as they come to me. The scenes often get revised as more and more of the story comes together & the scenes get joined into larger and larger fragments until a complete story is there. Sometimes scenes get radically changed or dropped as the process goes on.
  Then when it feels done, I have a first draft that I edit as a cohesive piece & get feedback on.
  So I'm still at the generating scenes and modifying the outline stage. Hopefully I'm not being too ambitious, but any progress will be progress :)
  I've tried pomedoro method & it can be great for getting past that initial inertia & actually getting into the flow of writing. Thanks for all you kind words & good luck with your world building and map making this month :D

I've been worldbuilding and plotting an planning and writing a solarpunk-ish novel since 2020, and work is still ongoing. I do that in my native german. Parallel to that, I'm working on a series of short stories all showcasing different preferable futures, connected by a sort-of-time-traveller telling us about them. This will be done in english. For this project, I want to experiment with using ai in different parts of the writing process. So no single-prompt-weird-stories, just delegating single tasks across the whole process and checking the quality of the results. I would love to sporadically talk about and maybe show parts of all these projects. Would that fit this writing club?
- My own writing weaves in and out of "true" solarpunk, so in my opinion that fits perfectly. I would also love to hear your thoughts on writing in multiple languages if you ever feel like sharing.
  It's pretty quiet in the December thread here at the moment (I just posted it yesterday), but please feel welcome to introduce yourself and your projects in as little or as much detail as you wish.
  You're not obligated to share any of your work, though I would love to read it and offer my thoughts. Personally, I've been using the Etherpad service offered by slrpnk.net to share snippets, so feel free to use that.
  PS. Welcome to the server! I see that you've join just recently. I hope to see you around. :)

29 comments