✍️ 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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I tend to write science fiction, mostly postapocalyptia but I've published a short story in a near future dystopia, and tried my hand at cyberpunk and fantasy. My current projects are a rural-cyberpunk-with-environmental-rage short story and comic, and a set of postapocalyptic rebuilding stories that I don't think quite make the cut for solarpunk.
I'm mostly doing short stories these days, so I can get something done. I've spent years on book-length projects with nothing ready to show for it so I'm trying my hand at smaller tasks. I'm learning to ride out whatever my current obsession is to get the most useful output from it. So the stories and comics are currently on hold while I knock together some solarpunk photobashes. After that's done for a minute, I'm hoping to finish up the comic and get a zine put together. I'm also shopping around for magazine for the rural cyberpunk story.
hey, cool to see another writer around! and oh, i love cyberpunk sometimes! i totally get the struggle with book length endeavors, especially given that even when you get to the end you might realize it's not really up to quality. struggling with that myself a lot. how's that like that you're dabbling in so many different mediums including comics, is that super freeing or sometimes also hard to navigate? i'm pretty stuck in my novel tracks for better and for worse, i have to admit.
Likewise! If you like cyberpunk there's an awesome community over on Cyberpunk@lemmy.villa-straylight.social (I spend about half my time on Lemmy over there)
Yeah when a short story turns out to have more issues than you thought, at least there's an upper limit on the number of issues possible, and it doesn't represent years of determined work (hopefully). My book projects have mostly stalled or collapsed under the number of logistical issues (part of why I'm trying to get better at planning and also getting some practice on smaller stories).
The changing mediums thing is mostly pretty useful. I've noticed that there are days when I write (I think) really well - usually when I'm fairly bad at everything else. And there are days when I just can't seem to do it. When I was younger I'd make myself sit there and work at it and when I'd go back and read that stuff, it's pretty bad. Sometimes it's better to just jump to something else, a painting, a comic, a woodworking project, and at least get something done. I've gotten better at telling what's going to work and when to switch, but it's a learning process. I don't really get burned out anymore though.
It also has the benefit of using different mediums for different jobs. Comics are great for when you need to show something complicated to describe but simple to understand visually, and stories are, I think, way better at conveying unspoken/unseen stuff, setting details, and emotions. I'm doing photobashes for solarpunk scenes because I want to show solarpunk values in practice but don't want to write a plot that fits it.