I have been considering finding a group of writers/artists to associate with in order to both provide me a catalyst for self-improvement and a set of peers who are serious about their work. I have several friends who are “into” writing or comics or whatever other medium, but most of them are as “into” it as the time between video games, drinking, and staying up late to binge Dexter episodes allows.
We have a whole sequences here on LessWrong about the Craft and the Community. So I don’t feel the need to provide some bits of anecdotal evidence for why I think having a community for your craft is a good idea.
Instead, I’ll just ask, to the writers: how have you found a community for your craft/have you bothered?
I put writing online for free and siphoned off spare HPMoR fans until I had enough fanbase to maintain my own stable of beta readers, set of tumblr tags, and modestly populated forum. This is more how I cultivated a fandom than a set of colleagues, but some of the people I collected this way also cowrite with me and most of them are available to spur me along.
I was once part of an online community on sffworld writing forum. There were regular posters like on any forum and there was also a small workshop (6-8 people) and each week two people would submit something for the rest of the group to read and provide feedback on. It was motivating and fun.
I frequent a sci-fi fan club in my city and from that group emerged a tiny writing workshop (6 members currently). The couple of guys who came up with the idea had heard that I wrote some small stuff and won a local contest, and thus I got invited. Every two Sundays we meet via Skype to comment on the stories that we’ve posted to our FB group since the last meeting. It has been helpful for me; we’ve agreed to be brutally honest with one another.
I have been considering finding a group of writers/artists to associate with in order to both provide me a catalyst for self-improvement and a set of peers who are serious about their work. I have several friends who are “into” writing or comics or whatever other medium, but most of them are as “into” it as the time between video games, drinking, and staying up late to binge Dexter episodes allows.
We have a whole sequences here on LessWrong about the Craft and the Community. So I don’t feel the need to provide some bits of anecdotal evidence for why I think having a community for your craft is a good idea.
Instead, I’ll just ask, to the writers: how have you found a community for your craft/have you bothered?
I put writing online for free and siphoned off spare HPMoR fans until I had enough fanbase to maintain my own stable of beta readers, set of tumblr tags, and modestly populated forum. This is more how I cultivated a fandom than a set of colleagues, but some of the people I collected this way also cowrite with me and most of them are available to spur me along.
I was once part of an online community on sffworld writing forum. There were regular posters like on any forum and there was also a small workshop (6-8 people) and each week two people would submit something for the rest of the group to read and provide feedback on. It was motivating and fun.
I frequent a sci-fi fan club in my city and from that group emerged a tiny writing workshop (6 members currently). The couple of guys who came up with the idea had heard that I wrote some small stuff and won a local contest, and thus I got invited. Every two Sundays we meet via Skype to comment on the stories that we’ve posted to our FB group since the last meeting. It has been helpful for me; we’ve agreed to be brutally honest with one another.