✍️ 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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Exciting were on month 13, its wild to think its been over a year since your first post :)
This month has been busy, but I have gotten some writing done. I drafted a new story idea and wrote a wedding officiant speech.
This month I would like to get at least one of my drafted stories into a finished draft. I have way too many ongoing projects and need to get some things done enough that I can put them to the side and move on to new ideas.
slrpnk writers go brrrrrrrr
Speech writing is so hard! Spoken word writing in general is a real challenge.
Glad to you hear you got some writing done, despite your busy month. :) And I can definitely relate to the problem of having too many ongoing projects haha; they really can start to weigh down new ideas after a while if you don't either finish them or mothball them.
100% to both things lol
I find the timing of speeches to be the hardest part. Keeping things engaging & consise while still having enough to fill the time slot is tricky.
& unfinished projects have such a way of sucking energy from everything else! I think it might partially be a perfectionist thing where I have a hard time recognizing when things are good enough and I really just need to leave them alone.
This is such a human phenomenon that it doesn't really need a name, but I stumbled upon the Ovsiankina effect, which is basically describing the feeling of being a "completionist" which yeah, I feel like it would be very difficult to want to finish everything and also be a (sounds like?) a bit of a perfectionist!
I'm projecting really hard right now, but I've found my own perfectionism paralyzing at times, so I wish you luck in recognizing when things are "good enough" so that you can free yourself and move on.
You're definetly not projecting lol I get stuck over thinking things when in reality the project is essentially finished. I think it might also be a result of being too close to it? Like I've thought about it so much that all I can see are the flaws, but when someone else reads my work they really enjoy it.
I'm trying to be better about calling things done once the inspiration has faded. I've definetly ruined a few things because I keep messing with them long after I should have walked away-- though that's more of a problem with my visual art.
Hopefully we'll both get better at finishing things and recognizing that they are indeed good enough :p