Welcome to this ninth/IX/9th writing club update!

Happy mid-March to you all, my well lettered friends. I hope you’ve been graced with some nice weather as we in the northern hemisphere enter into the warmer time of the year. Today is delightfully dreary and overcast where I’m at, which I’m hoping to channel into some indoor creativity.

Okay! Here are the Writers:

Please see last month’s post if you need to refresh your memory on what your goals were.

Just an FYI that while “membership” in the writing club is fluid and open, so too are the names above simply my best guess, without judgement, at who is participating on any particular month. So if you don’t see your name up there and you’d like me to add it, just shoot me a DM or even better just share what you’re working on and you’ll be added right back to the roster the following month. :)

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.netOPMEnglish
    4·
    17 days ago

    For my own update, I’ve been actually been doing pretty well. I’ve managed to keep my “streak” going (write 100+ words a weekday, edit on weekends). I’m still working on finding my voice, and adding more life and sense of place to my stories, but the practice of setting aside unstructured writing time continues to work for me. I think I’ll try to keep this up for a while longer, then maybe experiment with focusing it in a particular direction - like my attention starved short story.

    I’ve started a rough website for my indie/smol/fedi/etc web presence, linked in my profile. There I post the unfiltered feed of whatever daily thing I came up with. The quality is all over the place, but the practice is the point, and also that it is – at least nominally – public.

    Anyway, here’s a really short one I just pulled out of me. A dark little paracosm I think many children share: a world run by animals.

    Cat world

    In my world, the cats run the show. and the show never ends. the show is a game where the audience (which is the cats), and the players (which is everyone else) put on plays of everything that ever happened. there are shows all about mail carriers running their routes, squirrels minding their secret paths, and of course murder for food. the cats howl and yowl so loud you can’t even make out the players whose own screams dance in the high dark top of the big big tent.

    EDIT Oh right my goal. My goal for next month is to finish… at least a complete draft of my short story.

    • ManualOverride@slrpnk.netEnglish
      2·
      11 days ago

      I’ve started a rough website for my indie/smol/fedi/etc web presence, linked in my profile.

      Cool! I’ll check it out.

      Thanks, @grrgyle@slrpnk.net, for taking the time to organize this club! I really appreciate it.

    • Ellie@slrpnk.netMEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      Are you working on a mixture of short stories, like your post last month indicated? Or on something like a novel? What’s your long term project goal, a short story collection, a novel, or are you still figuring that out? Sorry if that’s all secret for now, I’m just curious. :-)

      • grrgyle@slrpnk.netOPMEnglish
        3·
        17 days ago

        I’ve currently got one short story on the back burner (theme of colonialism, empire in decline), and I’m working on a smaller one presently yeah (imperfect solarpunk midtopia from perspective of a loner addict). Although the more immediate like daily goal is just to workout that writing muscle. So most of my actual writing is on throwaway snippets or microfiction.

        I have nebulous long term goals of tackling larger and larger projects (novel, Twine game, visual novel) set in various paracosms that sprout up from being an introvert with an overactive imagination lol. :)

        And you questions are 1000% welcome! I’m trying to be less cagey about what I’m working on, so I find it useful to get this stuff out into the light - so I can tell if my ideas actually have legs, or if I just feel like they do because I’m looking at them from the wordless, internal eye of the mind.

        EDIT paracosm is like my word of the week lol, I can’t stop saying it

        • Ellie@slrpnk.netMEnglish
          3·
          17 days ago

          So most of my actual writing is on throwaway snippets or microfiction.

          That’s super fascinating to me, since I don’t really do throwaway writing. Either it’s for one of the big projects, or I don’t write at all.

          • grrgyle@slrpnk.netOPMEnglish
            2·
            17 days ago

            Ah ha well you see I’m not big on ffffocus (imagine my making a chopping motion with my hands here). Not my forté. So the tiny stories let me switch between worlds before I get tired of writing one.

            It is always fascinating to see how different folks are from each other.