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Writing Community

Stop Focusing on the “U” in Community

Posted on January 5, 2020

I am a lonely writer.

I feel like I am writing this story for an audience of one, me. I’m scared that no one will ever care about it, and glom on to those who show the slightest inclination of interest, feigned or legitimate, out of desperation just to not feel like I am alone in this anymore. I want someone to love this as much as me. Hell, I’d just be happy if someone invested a small amount of time into it as a casual fan. But, I don’t just get excited about my own work. Inspiration comes from everywhere, and I yearn for an environment where writers have come together to collaborate.

I envy people who get to work in writer’s rooms or in tight-knit established writing circles where ideas are exchanged and thrown about as casually as confetti. I pine for collaboration— to pick the minds of other creatives and find solutions together. I get energized in situations where I’m free to just expel ideas with abandon. I’m an idea man, Chuck!

At this point you’re yelling at your screen saying, Hey idiot. Just join a writing forum or a writer’s group or something like that.

Well, I have, and after twelve years of pursuing this collaborative pipe dream, I have decided, writer’s groups suck. After all the groups I have joined, forums I answered questions in, contributions and connections I have made, I’ve gotten very little to show for my efforts. I’m still writing alone and I’m the only one who cares about my story.

In a world where the internet exists, where there are countless communities designed specifically to connect writers of even the most esoteric genres, how can this still feel like a solitary pursuit? How is it that, even though I have writer friends and belong to different writing communities from fanfiction websites to a private slack of former Inkshares authors who all went rogue, I still feel like I’m alone and I am the only person who cares about my story?

Without the limitations placed on us my the perceived parameters of our own projects, we tap into pure imagination. We open our minds.

The answer is simple: I am the only one who cares about my story, period. Sure, I might have a few fans or writer friends who are interested in the idea, but the thing about writers is that they are all way more wrapped up in their own projects to care about anyone else’s. Writers are fucking selfish.

What? What? What? You expect me to give my valuable time and creative energy, wasting that on someone else’s project? The short answer to that is yes, yes I do. So go ahead. Yell at me, and scoff sarcastically, clutching your metaphorical pearls in disgust as you ask: Why would I put my limited time towards focusing on somebody else’s creation?

Well, since you asked so politely, here are several reasons why you should.

The beauty of helping other writers through their blocks is it unlocks a beautiful mechanism of our brain we often limit when writing our own works— our imagination. When we’re brainstorming on our stories, we automatically start out with limits. Our brain throws out a random idea, and we immediately begin negating it to death, throwing out a million reasons why it won’t work. That’s out of character for my lead; the magic system doesn’t work that way; that feels like a deus ex machina; blah blah blah. I’ll wallow in creative agony for hours, days, weeks, months, years, trying to find creative solutions to corners I have written myself into because I’m afraid that a good idea will force me to go back and change what I’ve already spent hours, days, weeks, months, or years working on. I’ll throw out an idea even before I’ve played around with it simply because it doesn’t fit what I thought I wanted to write. But, if a writer friend comes to me and lays out their specific writing dilemma, I suddenly turn into the Muse from Dogma.

Serendipity the Muse, Dogma (Kevin Smith, 1999)

So, why is it that when asked by another writer for help solving their own problems that I can come up with a million ideas, but can’t come up with any for myself? Easy. I don’t have any stake in their story. I’m not the one who has to rewrite things if my ideas don’t fit. I have the benefit of being removed from the situation, and with that comes clarity and flexibility. I can throw out a dozen ideas in a minute, no problem, because what is the worst thing that is going to happen— they say no, they don’t like that idea? Who cares, here is a dozen more ideas. I’ve got a thousand of them. Ideas are everywhere.

Without the limitations placed on us by the perceived parameters of our own projects, we tap into pure imagination. We open our minds. The benefit to the other writer is that they can see things they could not see before, solutions that may have been obvious, that were obscured by their limited perspective.

Okay, that’s great for the other guy, but what about me? I still don’t see why I should waste my time and creative energy for someone else’s benefit.

Well, if you could look past your own selfishness for a moment, your limited perspective if you will, you’d see there are two benefits for you that result as a by-product of your creative generosity: 1) you just generated a bajillion ideas right there, and even if you are writing a different genre than your writing buddy, there still might be a gem in their you could mine and use to fit your own story needs, and 2) your writing buddy is likely to turn around and say, “Dude, that was super helpful. Thank you. What are you stuck on? Maybe I can help.”

I envy people who get to work in writer’s rooms or in tight-knit established writing circles where ideas are exchanged and thrown about as casually as confetti.

As writers, we perceive our time as valuable, a precious non-renewable resource. Most of us are hobby writers hoping for a break while we work or attend school full-time, juggle family and social obligations, and also try to make time for other hobbies or maybe just relaxing and doing nothing. So, we hoard our creativity, our time, and our energy like Golem and the One Ring. We join communities to connect with other authors, but we only ever talk about ourselves, our projects, and use those connections to try to get people excited about our projects. But, those other writers are so engrossed in hoarding their time, energy, and creativity, they form surface level connections with the other writers in the group, and never actually go out of their way to help, collaborate, or even just fucking read/watch/listen whatever content you’ve produced.

I don’t know how many times I’ve helped out a “writing friend” who was stuck and needed to talk through a block, was begging for a beta, or a multitude of other reasons a writer needs help, only to be told when I hoped the favor would be returned “I’ll get to it when I can, I’m just so busy” or “I don’t want to make promises right now” or “I’m swamped as it is”.

Did I offer to help? Yes. Did I do it because I automatically assumed that my investment in you and your work would yield an investment in me and mine? Yeah, kinda. Do you owe me because I was kind enough to help you out? Honestly, no. Nice people don’t do nice things because they want to be rewarded, and I know that. But, it doesn’t make you less selfish for not even offering, or even worse, offering with the condition that you want to pay me back when you can, which is basically the death sentence of promises.

I’ve abandoned writing groups for this very reason, and that too was selfish. I wasn’t getting anything out of it. I felt like I was only ever giving and never receiving. I crave to be part of a creative conscious bigger than myself. It energizes me, and it makes me a better, more productive writer. Last night, I spent what probably amounted to less than an hour helping a writing buddy just to brainstorm some ideas, and even if 99% of the ideas I threw out were unusable to him, or even just bad, there were a few that absolutely broke through his creative block. And, as a result, I was energized to work on my own stuff. Sure, I gave up my energy and time for someone else, but it made the time and energy I put towards my own work more productive in the long run. The added bonus was he immediately turned around and asked what I needed help with.

You expect me to give my valuable time and creative energy, wasting that one someone else’s project? The short answer to that is yes, yes I do.

Instead of sequestering myself to stagnate on ideas I have mulled over umpteen times, I gave up a little bit of time, and was even able to multitask doing other things while I helped him over Slack, and I benefited from that exchange immensely. I even cannibalized one of my own ideas (which is another benefit I argue is a good reason to write fanfic in this article here).

My point here, whether I’m managed to express it well enough without sounding whiny, is this: We are in this together. To get, we must give. I want people to care about my stuff, so I put myself out there, hoping to make connections, and sadly, they turn into dead end streets. People want me to beta for them, buy their books, watch their content… but don’t have time to return the favor. I get it— we’re all busy. But, aren’t you lonely? Don’t you feel like you’re suffocating over there by yourself. Come up for air. Step away from your own thing for just a few minutes and reach out to another creator in need. Stop focusing on the U in Community. If you would stop being so selfish and short sighted, and you just might prosper more than you would on your own.

Craft Editorials Resources Savvy Snark & Sass

Work Smarter, Not Lazier

Posted on April 27, 2017

Why the easy solution to writing problems is a bigger problem in itself.

Worksheets are the root of a vicious cycle.

I’ll freely admit, I have used worksheets, workbooks, and many templates over the years. And, just as I have come to loathe them in my teaching, I am starting to loathe them in writing as well.

Worksheets are making me lazy. They are also making me a less creative person. And the the weird part is, I cannot figure out why.

In teaching, the reason I hate worksheets is that they don’t make the students think. They are just fill in the blank boxes that regurgitate content from the book. They don’t require you to rework the material or think about it in a new way. Perhaps this is why I am starting to hate worksheets for writing. While, unlike their academic counterparts, they do make you think about what is being written, the responses tend to be vague, unthoughtful, and in general, nothing you didn’t already know or have figured out prior. I do not find myself inspired when using worksheets, let alone discovering new, inventive ways of engaging with my material.

But, I still cannot figure out why?

The usual suspects for these types of “workstuffs” (or in other words, the outside resources we use when organizing our stories) tend to be character questionnaires, setting templates, and plot outlines. They are always lengthy… I’ve seen character question sheets titled “100 Questions for Complex Characters.” Why the hell do you need to answer that many questions about your character? Knowing their favorite ice cream has no bearing on how they make their decisions, which does have bearing on the story, as a strong character’s decisions are what drive the plot.

This brings us to our first problem with workstuffs.

“Writing well in a vacuum is impossible. You cannot write a strong story in a dark closet all by yourself, which is the problem with workstuffs. It’s busy work that you do by yourself, with only you to evaluate the results.”

As I often do when I have my own writing dilemma, I threw the question out to my writing slack, where I keep my ever so handy treasury of writers. It’s like having a bunch of experienced writers on retainer… or as I like to think of them, having their souls trapped in my laptop for eternity in order to do my bidding. Yes. Yes….

So, having thrown out the question: “Do you find worksheets and workbooks helpful, and if not, why?” this was the analysis of the responses I collected:

Workstuffs, through some amazing, dark sorcery, manage to be incredibly long and yet lack substance. As Christine Brennecke, author of Seven Shards: the Colors of Wine, said in our conversation about why workstuffs suck, she summed it up best by saying, “Too many words. Not enough good words.” Somehow, they say a bunch of crap, yet say nothing at all while providing no assistance to really solving your problem.

Which brings me to the point made by Elayna Mae Darcy, author of They Are the Last and producer of the podcast SpeakBeasty, “They basic AF!”. Yet, they accomplish this while still being incredibly complicated to figure out. Often times, they serve as clickbait to get you to a writer’s website, where they do the majority of the hawking of their wares. “Throw up a 99 Questions to Ask Your Character worksheet on a website, and suddenly there is an unspoken agreement between writers,” as Elayna calls it: ‘If I help you, you’ll buy my shit.’

The unfortunate problem with that agreement is you’re getting the short end of the stick. Chances are that the content wasn’t even original. It was probably just some regurgitated crap they saw on another website once. Seriously, compare and contrast these resources next time you are tempted to use one. It is surprising how often material gets re-purposed. Author and Editor Elan Samuel, of The Warbler book review blog and Story Perfect Editing fame, pointed out the big flaw in this system: “They’re usually a very basic concept, something every writing tip/instructor/resource delivers, with the intent of driving more traffic to the site.”

“Fundamentally I just find the entire concept of ‘worksheets’ useless if you’re not directly involved in a course/class where your work is going to be actually evaluated by another human being. Just putting up these random ‘exercises’ for people to use with no supervision or guidance is always useless, in my opinion.” – Liam Dynes

Many of the workstuffs you find on the internet, especially on author websites, are the most basic format and the most basic methods. Another valid argument Elayna Mae Darcy makes against workstuffs is that despite being a visual method of organizing your thoughts, they fail at stimulating the user visually. “They don’t visually engage me, like at all,” says Darcy. “I LOVE worksheets and forms to print, but I can legitimately never find ones that are interesting looking enough to keep my attention past the title.” This became a general consensus among the other writers, and even I could relate to this one. I don’t know how many times over the years I have revamped pre-made worksheets in my History and Special Education English classes. Sometimes I cut them up and reorganize them, cutting out pieces I don’t want, adding pieces I do, taping them all back together into a new form. Other times, I just take ideas from them or a section of reading, and make my own handout from scratch. In many cases when I do this, it isn’t because I don’t think the worksheet is visually stimulating in an aesthetic sense, but rather, it confuses the student just by looking at it. It does not generate a logical train of thought when working. Good design, in both form and function, solves this problem.

On that note, this was also a downfall of workstuffs in the opinion of Liam Dynes, author of Rockets. Workstuffs are meant to be universal, which tends to make them generic. As a result, they often focus too much on the mechanical, rather than rooting out the real source of a writing problem. As Elan Samuel said, “The exercises are often vapid and don’t dig into the problems of writing beyond the mechanical.”

Content-wise, they are all form and no function, which is completely the opposite problem of what we see with their design.

As a teacher though, I find the absolute worst issue I have with writing worksheets is the second point Liam made about how to evaluate what you actually put into the worksheet.

“Fundamentally I just find the entire concept of ‘worksheets’ useless if you’re not directly involved in a course/class where your work is going to be actually evaluated by another human being. Just putting up these random ‘exercises’ for people to use with no supervision or guidance is always useless, in my opinion.” – Liam Dynes

While workstuffs are inherently filled with surface flaws, even if those flaws were remedied, this would still be a major issue. Without someone to review the work you have done on the worksheet/workbook/workstuff, how is a writer to gain any actual insight into the problem they were trying to fix?

“Throw up a ’99 Questions to Ask Your Character’ worksheet on a website, and suddenly there is an unspoken agreement between writers… ‘If I help you, you’ll buy my shit.’” – Elayna Mae Darcy, They Are the Last

Perhaps, the one bright side of worksheets is that they do help you to see the flaws in your story. If you can’t fill in the blanks, then yes, ultimately there is a problem. But once that is discovered, workstuffs seem to be the worst way you can fix that problem. This is why it is incredibly vital, not helpful, but vital to find a writer’s group. Writing well in a vacuum is impossible. You cannot write a strong story in a dark closet all by yourself, which is the problem with workstuffs. It’s busy work that you do by yourself, with only you to evaluate the results.

Luckily, we live in the age of the internet. Finding a writing group has never been easier… *cough* if you live in a big city *cough*. But, even those who do not have luck with finding local groups, can still interact and exchange writing with real people in writing forums, online communities, and other writing spaces, like NaNoWriMo.

Over here at IndiePen Ink, we hope to begin cultivating a rich, inclusive and supportive environment. One of our future ambitions is to have a forum and several targeted writing communities. If you would like to help us start growing our community, reach out to us on twitter @indiepenink or email me: sass@indiepenink.com.

If you are really tripped up by a writing dilemma, no matter how specific to your story, visit our Savvy, Snark, and Sass page. They’re like RPG healers, specifically trained to heal your writing ailments. Leave a message for them describing your specific writing issue, and any possible solutions you have tried that did not work, and the girls will give you three different possible solutions based on their writing experience. They are currently taking submissions that will be used in a future show, hosted by Indiepen Ink, Savvy, Snark, and Sass (…Save Your Ass).

Coming Soon to an Internet near you!

Write on, young savior,