✍️ 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.
view the rest of the comments
I was planning to post something up once I got myself feeling brave sharing poetry with someone for the first time since highschool. I kinda stopped writing poetry in college and haven't written anything in a decade. But I want to get myself brave enough to start showing people my art to participate in the whole "make art at home" movement to be part of reclaiming creativity from our culture of emptiness. Which I want to do some poetry about to.
I was also writing some poetry earlier this evening realizing I was more willing to be real with myself through poetry than I am through journaling
I totally get how sharing your art is hard, especially something so raw and close to the heart like poetry. I've never had any skill in poetry and the few times I've tried, I feel I was blushing with embarrassment just sitting there alone. But I guess that's also the power of poetry in a way...
That kinda reminds me: the whole reason I kicked off this writing club was because I wanted to "practice in public" with other people, where we could share how things are going, post snippets, and just like actually take an interest in eachother's stuff, rather than be each stuck on our own little islands of self doubt or inertia or whatever.
Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're getting back into it - I sincerely hope you keep it up! (Maybe even have a goal of writing another poem this month? 😉)
Aw that sounds like an amazing journey towards reconnecting with poetry and writing.
I've also found poetry can be much more illuminating than journaling. I think for me it's that my inner monolog is very rigid & sometimes journaling just repeats those inner judgements whereas poetry forces me to word things differently & in that process I find I have new things to say.
I hope you keep finding inspiration to be creative this month, would love to hear about how your journey progresses :)