this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
10 points (100.0% liked)

✍️ Writing

189 readers
25 users here now

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.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hail and well met, and also welcome; welcome to the 11th writing club update. Fun fact about the number 11: it's only the tenth positive palindromic number, and it will be 11 more months before we encounter our next one (22). Wow.

The weather here has been exceptionally rainy lately, and so perfect for weeding, editing, and savouring moments over hot cups of ginger tea.

I hope you are all safe and that your ginger and writing projects remain free of mold.

Speaking of writing, this is a post about writing. And these are our writers:

Brave scrivenauts, out on the shoals of imagination. Wading through the pools of doubt, and mucking about in the mud of enlightenment. Probably talking with the crabs or clams of metaphor or simile or something, too...

As always dear passerby you're welcome to join us for as long or short as you like -- simply share what you're working on and your goal for the next month, and I'll add you to our list of illustrious weirdos.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (2 children)

My dry spell is continuing quite fiercely, though if you count writing cover letters I have been writing up a storm! Haha. My daily microfiction practice is closer to weekly one now, but I'm not beating myself up over it. It'll come back to me, I just know it. I'm focusing on bedtime reading (60s social sci-fi) and jotting down any odd notion that pops into my head, for when I do start writing at length again.

EDIT Just in the interests of sharing, here's a little snippet of microfiction I worked on this month. I'm kind of unsure about all of it, but I like exploring the idea of ghostly consciousness, and ambiguous personhood. It's not especially "solarpunk" but there's something about it that I just can't turn away from.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago

Keep us posted if you find something cool among the 60s sofi! I'm very interested in discussing those ideas, but often the 70y old American English makes it harder for me to read smoothly. I tried reading A Canticle for Leibowitz this last month and despite the cool concept (that was what made me read it), I've been very unimpressed by the actual reading experience.

As for the block, I can 400% guarantee it will end as soon as your stressful patch ends, so best of luck for that!

load more comments (1 replies)