✍️ Writing
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.
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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.
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