this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
16 points (100.0% liked)

✍️ Writing

259 readers
1 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.

Click here to visit our solarpunk writing resource wiki!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hi folks, and welcome to writing club update number 14 (fourteen!). Opening up to page 14 of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles we find this paradoxically stark and effusive description of a coming storm. Or perhaps all coming storms:

It was like those days when you heard a thunderstorm coming and there was the waiting silence and then the faintest pressure of the atmosphere as the climate blew over the land in shifts and shadows and vapors. And the change pressed at your ears and you were suspended in the waiting time of the coming storm.

[...]

And then the storm. The electric illumination, the engulfments of dark wash and sounding black fell down, shutting in, forever.

Being as much of my bioregion is currently in the middle of a month-long drought, we could do with a "dark wash" right now. I hope you've had a decent amount of rain wherever you are, and if you're also in a drought, I wish for both of us a big beautiful storm soon!

Speaking of welcome deluges, here are our wonderful writers:

Hopefully your writing has felt more like a deluge than a drought, but even the latter can be constructive in its own way. This also goes to any visitors not on this list (welcome!): please feel welcome to reply and comment with your own thoughts and projects!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] ellie@slrpnk.net 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's lovely to meet up with everyone again, and to read what y'all are up to!

I've done some small but in overall volume substantial edits and tweaks to my superhero'ish mage student series. I haven't drafted anything new, but I've been thinking through some fixes regarding representation, and I've been busy on the art side in a different way. I've also been working on music related to the book series, and I made big progress on that front this month, and some other art ideas for the series.

My tech obligations kept me from jumping right back into proper drafting, but this way I'm keeping the universe fresh in my mind until I have a schedule better suitable for drafting again.

[–] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Oooh art! I love how multimedia you're getting with this project - writing, art, and music. It sounds like a great way to give yourself lots of different creative outlets for whenever you have time to work on the project.

What was your plan when you decided to do more than writing? Art makes sense (I'm assuming cover art), but I would have never thought to make music associated with my own writing. Do you listen to music while reading usually?

[–] ellie@slrpnk.net 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I listen to music while writing, not so much when reading. But I used to make music even before I got into writing novels, and I won't stop creating music pieces for fun, so doing some specifically for the books was just a natural fit. And it helps me feel like the book universe is more real and multifaceted!