this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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✍️ Writing

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A community for writers, like poems, fiction, non-fiction, short stories, long books, all those sorts of things, to discuss writing approaches and what's new in the writing world, and to help each other with writing.

Rules for now:

1. Try to be constructive and nice. When discussing approaches or giving feedback to excerpts, please try to be constructive and to maintain a positive vibe. For example, don't just vaguely say something is bad but try to list and explain downsides, and if you can, also find some upsides. However, this is not to say that you need to pretend you liked something or that you need to hide or embellish what you disliked.

2. Mention own work for purpose and not mainly for promo: Feel free to post asking for feedback on excerpts or worldbuilding advice, but please don't make posts purely for self promo like a released book. If you offer professional services like editing, this is not the community to openly advertise them either. (Mentioning your occupation on the side is okay.) Don't link your excerpts via your website when asking for advice, but e.g. Google Docs or similar is okay. Don't post entire manuscripts, focus on more manageable excerpts for people to give feedback on.

3. What happens in feedback or critique requests posts stays in these posts: Basically, if you encounter someone you gave feedback to on their work in their post, try not to quote and argue against them based on their concrete writing elsewhere in other discussions unless invited. (As an example, if they discuss why they generally enjoy outlining novels, don't quote their excerpts to them to try to prove why their outlining is bad for them as a singled out person.) This is so that people aren't afraid to post things for critique.

4. All writing approaches are valid. If someone prefers outlining over pantsing for example, it's okay to discuss up- and downsides but don't tell someone that their approach is somehow objectively worse. All approaches are on some level subjective anyway.

5. Solarpunk rules still apply. The general rules of solarpunk of course still apply.

founded 9 months ago
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Writing Club (slrpnk.net)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

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.


Participants

@JacobCoffinWrites - goal
@grrgyl - goal
@hazeebabee - goal
@Pip - goal

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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 :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I like the idea of linking things back to the main post yeah. Very small scale, but probably adequate for our use, like you said :)

For DM motivation I'm just going to take the risk and assume that unless someone says otherwise that they will be ok with it.

I wasn't planning on really hectoring anyone: just a gentle reminder about a week before the "deadline" that there is at least one person (me) who will be genuinely curious about any progress (or no) that they've made towards their goal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I think thats a great approach & your energy seems perfect for it, kind and motivating without feeling overbearing :)