✍️ 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 got laid off from my job early in the month, and haven't had much luck finding a new one, so that has been sapping my will and energy for creative writing.
Thankfully, it has not dampened my appetite for reading, so I have been doing plenty of "research" for my story, in the form of reading many many short stories (primarily from World's Best SF #3, and the Analog and S&SF magazines), and various Wikipedia entries on indigenous lifeways. It's actually been nice just planting seeds in my creative garden, without asking it to produce anything.
My goal for this month (not counting my unfortunate requirement to secure a day job) is very humble: I would like to get back on track with sketching out my outline. I think if I can handle that with everything else that is going on, I will be quite proud.
Reading is a great way to continue building up inspiration and references when you're not quite in a space to be actively writing. I love the planting seeds metaphor too :)
Good luck with everything this month!