✍️ 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
IIIII did not progress on my climate fiction. I might literally do so today after I put the baby to bed.
My goals this month are business related. My other pen name (the cli fi sci fi one) needs a bit of love. I am currently selling 0 books because it’s impossible to buy them… because I was refusing to put them on Amazon. I hate Amazon with a white hot fury. If I do put my books up there it will be angrily. But… well my author storefront fees just went up Too High, and I haven’t had hardcover books for sale in a Minute because I haven’t been able to ship them out. Because I had a baby. But that was in June and I wanna be a more authory author again.
My romance is doing well under that pen name. I’ve got a few subscribers on the serialisation platform. And some on bluesky now. I’ve been writing consistently, too!
So goals: figure out a way to sell e- and physical- books again. If that’s via Amazon… so be it. But I’m gonna try hard for it to not be.
The pull of Amazon is mighty, and I deeply respect your struggle to stay as free of its influence as you can. I'm just a "consumer," so it's easy for me to stay away and just go without, but as an independent author, it's I'm sure, much more costly to remain principled.
So would you say that the romance is easier to write, or maybe more rewarding? I can only speak for myself, but when I have trouble writing out a scene/character/story, it's often because there's some internal resistance. Like maybe some more "work" to be done before the writing goes more smoothly (which is also work, but different, lol).
I am not at all an author, so you would know better than me, anyway.
PS. Do you write personal letters, emails? You have a great correspondence style!
Apologies for replying so late!
I succeeded in starting off of Amazon and found another good distribution method.
But. Romance! I find that it’s more fun and escapist for me to write romance. I grant myself a lot more artistic liberty with it for some reason, whereas in sci fi I get caught up in details. There’s also a very strict structure to a true romance novel which I’m not an expert on, but basically readers expect a 3 act structure and happily ever after ending. I find the structure freeing kinda?
Re: correspondence style, I find this to be such a cool compliment. I consider my email skills to be really good honestly, ha. Though I need to write more letters to folks. I enjoy it and always mean to do it more.
And thank you!
That totally makes sense. I find I can write sci-fi defensively, like I'm imagining readers' complaints and writing in little world building details as parries.
But then I remind myself that my favourite sci-fi tends towards fantasy, or lo-fi, or focuses more on interactions between beings, so maybe I shouldn't bother with an imaginary audience that I can't relate with.
Idk. Thoughts, lol.
Glad to hear you've found a nonazon distribution solution! I hope it works out well.