Write Club report: 7 writers, 16 weeks--you do the math

What do you get when 7 writers egg one another on to write a story every two weeks for 16 weeks? A total of 56 stories! Okay, I did the math for you.

We have just completed Round 1, and I'm amazed at what we're accomplishing. If you would like more background on Write Club (an event sponsored by The Writers' Block), simply check out the #writeclub tag, as several of us have blogged about it. In a nutshell, it's a 16-week writing boot camp that we believe will result in all participants completing multiple works for publication. Each writer will produce a total of 8 stories, all of which will be peer edited and ready for finalizing and submitting to publishers. In this post I'll do a quick retrospective on the first round, with some take-aways for serious writers, and then share what happens next.

(Image source: Pixabay)

Round 1 retrospective

We did it! Seven survivors have slogged through the first round of the 16-week Write Club boot camp. Here’s a quick retrospective:

• Our first prompt-master, @tanglebranch, issued a story prompt for us all to follow.
• We had a Discord chat to launch Write Club and connect up about how to use the prompt and get cracking.
• Each of us submitted a story by the deadline, a week after the story prompt was announced.
• We read each of the other stories and did a high-level review, via questionnaire. This feedback was collected in a spreadsheet where we could peruse all the comments on our work to learn what worked, and what didn’t.
• Then, we each picked our two favorite stories to critique in depth. We completed the critiques two days ago, and now it’s time to do it all over again.

How does it feel to have completed a round? Fantastic.

Honestly, right now I have a “pinch me; is this real?” feeling. I went into Write Club with a lot of trepidation. I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit it into my life. I had already committed to writing daily posts for the month of January, and adding all this activity to my schedule in addition to that seemed potentially grueling.

And yet, I’m doing this. I’m loving it. It’s going well. I haven’t missed a daily post. Truth be told, there are some challenging days when my eyes want to close and it’s past midnight as I wrap up whatever I still have to get done for that day. On days like that, you know what I think? I think without these challenges, I wouldn’t be doing all this. I would allow my busy life and my desire for sleep (over-rated, right?) to set my schedule. There is no way I would be getting all this writing done under normal circumstances.

That’s the take-away I want to share from this. Having commitments and a schedule makes all the difference when you need to level-up from whatever plateau you’re comfortably stuck on.

Let Round 2 begin!

Yesterday, @Jordan.Lesich, founder of Write Club, as well as our esteemed leader, issued the next Write Club writing prompt. And it’s a doozy.

If you would like to participate informally, come on along. Here's the idea behind this prompt: you must write about two unrelated things, one of which is a metaphor for the other. The story that inspired this prompt is called Chicxulub, by T.C. Boyle, and you can click that link to read it online in the New Yorker.

I am hoping not to give any spoilers; but the two things that happen are a a science/nature event and a personal event.

You know you have to go read it now and find out what happens!

Today we had our session launch Discord call. Of course we are all stewing and brewing about this prompt. That is part of the fun of all this: deciding how to generate a unique and interesting story idea from a prompt. And then it’s incredibly fascinating to see how 7 different people approach it.

• Some write a one-sentence summary of the storyline.
• Some map out their stories.
• Some just start writing and see what comes out.

The first step, for me, is to sketch out a number of storylines (or loglines). Then I spend a bit of time mulling them over, and I pick the one that really speaks to me.

I'm ready. Here we go. Wish me luck!

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Thank you for reading.

Are you a writer seeking community or help with your writing? If so, please check out The Writers' Block on Discord.

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