Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The Initiation of a Writing Group
From humble beginnings as an ad in Craigslist my Speculative Fiction writing group begins. What is Speculative Fiction you ask? Well, it covers the range of Science Fiction & Fantasy writing. Now you know.
A lot of learning and development has already happened for me and the group hasn't even begun. For example I learnt that putting an ad on Craigslist will draw a lot of emails - and giving out a non-anonymous email just fuels the fire. However that's the nature of the beast and I can always kill and create email addresses. One of the core components of the writing group has to be trust, we are going to be sharing our stories - good,bad and ugly - being able to trust the other group members not to wound you is important. That's why I used a 'real email address', one that clearly came from the local service provider.
Some of the highlights from the emails that I received responding to my writing group ad:
More Below...
'The Dood' with the obvious pseudonym who is a wiccan sorcerer. He had recently published his first novel (all 14 pages!) and the second would be published soon (at the same online website).
The very nice 'Retired Lady' who argued that the things described in bodice rippers are fantasy in nature and thus would qualify for Speculative Fiction. I was genuinely interested to see what she would write, just not in the context of *this* writing group.
'The Soldier' who wrote humorous stories about, well...being a soldier. Very interesting subject material, but again without aliens, time travel, psionics or Fairies it doesn't really fall into Speculative Fiction.
After a couple of months of the above and similar I did receive a response from a someone who actually wrote speculative fiction. She has travelled the world teaching English with her husband, and now lives here in the city. We've met in person, verified that we are not crazed axe wielding psychos and set a date for the first meeting. So with two (myself and Her) we have a writing group.
Humble beginnings still, but I did receive an email the other day from a self described pack rat of people. Seems she writes journals of her travel experiences, but now wants to explore fiction and fantasy....
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1 comment:
My wife felt I may have been a little harsh in describing the three people that were not asked to join my writing group. She has a point, I was trying to poke some fun at them, while keeping things anonymous enough that it didn't identify them for public embarrassment. The thing is I clearly outlined in my ad the type of writing I was going to do, which many people just ignored when responding to the ad. As well when forming a writing group it's OK not to work with some people. This is a creative endeavour and in forming a group of various personalities it's important to choose people that will work well together. Someone who believes that 14 pages of writing is a novel, and considers posting it on the web the same thing as getting published (in a literary sense), isn't going to be a person that I can work with. We have different views on writing, and ultimately different goals and metrics to measure our progress toward those goals. However if by chance you find this blog and identify yourself as someone that I poked fun at, well , sorry, it won't likely happen again (to you at least.)
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