✍️ Writing

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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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grrgyle

Writing Club - July 2024 (self.writing)

submitted 4 months ago by grrgyle to c/writing

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Welcome to the inaugural writing club update! This is a brand new writing club, first proposed here. I have some ideas about what I want from this club, but where we go from here is open ended.

So feel free to start new posts or spinoffs in between my monthly posts, as long as they jive with the rules in our gracious host community's sidebar, you have my full support. :)

On to the whole point of this club! The following brave things set to text concrete goals for themselves (linked beside their names, just below). If you'd like to join their number, simply say so in the comments, along with your goal for this month. Okay, here are the stars of our show: 👏👏👏👏

Participants

You don't have to share any of the actual material you've worked on unless you want to (you could even use our local Etherpad to share writing stuff - for example).

Here are some questions to start you off. I'm genuinely interested in your answers, but don't feel you need to follow my script. This is just a prompt:

How do you think you did on your goal(s)?
What would you like to accomplish for our next check-in in August?
Is there a part of your project that you'd especially like feedback on?
Is there anything about this writing club you'd like us to do differently?

No stress if you didn't accomplish everything you set out to (I fell short and I'm still here hehe). I would love to hear your updates no matter how things went!

I'll share my own progress in a comment below. What I'm hoping from this step is that we treat this as part check-in, and part conversation. This is your chance to really dig into each others' projects (and if someone has done so for you, maybe it would be nice to return the favour and take an interest in their own project? ;))

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[–] hazeebabee 4 points 4 months ago (7 children)

So my goal was to work on actually editing some of the scenes I'd already written for a sci-fi story. I have tons of scenes drafted out, but am a huge slacker when it comes to editing. Unfortunatly, I ended up deciding to move houses & haven't done much writing at all this month.

I'm finally all packed though, and am basically just in waiting for closing dates in my current and future house to arrive. I'm hoping having all my distractions packed up & nothing to do will help make July a much more productive month.

I'm hoping to have my opening chapter edited, maybe write a few more scenes, and tighten up my proposed timeline to match with my outline.

& just for more information: The story centers around a protagonist who creates a way of augmenting the human mind. This opens up many new possibilities for what humans can be, but of course there are those who seek to monitize and control the technology. The story will take place over an extended period of time as humanity is radically changed by technology. Themes include the necessity of understanding and controlling the tech we use, boundries of the self, and what it means to be human.

I have another project that takes place in the same universe but instead centers around a found family of heavily modded space travellars. It's a much more playful series focusing on queerness, counter cultural spaces, & creating meaning in a meaningless universe. I bring it up because the two stories are closely linked & I often jump between the two. The queer space story is one I daydream about more, but the augmented mind story has a stronger plot and is a more traditionally sci fi story.

Heres to hoping this month is one with lots of time spent writing the days away :)

[–] grrgyle 2 points 4 months ago (6 children)

The story centers around a protagonist who creates a way of augmenting the human mind. This opens up many new possibilities for what humans can be, but of course there are those who seek to monitize and control the technology. The story will take place over an extended period of time as humanity is radically changed by technology. Themes include the necessity of understanding and controlling the tech we use, boundries of the self, and what it means to be human.

Thanks for sharing this high level synopsis. The absolute breadth of this project sounds intense - do you have a length in mind for your book yet?

I love these kinds of stories that take place over a long period of time, since by the time you get to the end you have so much context all loaded up in a kind of emotional tsunami. Anyway, it's really affecting.

Not sure how much detail you can give, but how many time periods are you thinking of writing?

I also love how your queer space story and this "main" one can kind of feed off of each other. IMHO it sounds like a smart way to hijack the "shiny object syndrome" (or SOS, lol) that so many creative folks experience. Actually it kind of reminds me of @JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net's Postcards from a Solarpunk Future in that way! (Here's an example)

Maybe there's a little bit of it in my obsession with maps too, hehe.

[–] JacobCoffinWrites 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Sorry, I think you replied to the wrong comment. Thanks for the shout-out though!

[–] grrgyle 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I don't think I did! I was just relating how we each seem to have a main project along with a related side project

[–] JacobCoffinWrites 4 points 4 months ago

Whoops, I saw it in my inbox and assumed it was a reply rather than because you tagged me - my bad!

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