It sucks to see writing focused communities all about censorship when writing should be about having the bravery to present challenging ideas. The diversity conundrum is a mess too - You have to represent those POVs, yet you can’t write those POVs, and it basically creates a trap where writers feel they may as well giv…
It sucks to see writing focused communities all about censorship when writing should be about having the bravery to present challenging ideas. The diversity conundrum is a mess too - You have to represent those POVs, yet you can’t write those POVs, and it basically creates a trap where writers feel they may as well give up…
NaNo has also disappointed me over the years. They stopped legitimately treating it like a challenge and replaced their attitude with a bunch of “We’re all winners in our own way!” nonsense, which sucks as NaNo is one of the best ways someone can improve as a writer if taken seriously. And I definitely noticed the emails get all diversity-oriented, which also definitely happened at the cost of no longer receiving much practical writing advice. I love the exercise but never use the site anymore.
I try to find writing forums now that still agree to do the challenge together but actually have a writer-friendly culture. It’s hard, since they all wind up sliding off the rails in the end, but I pray that some of the forums I’m in now will have the courage to stay viewpoint neutral or at least accept not everyone shares the same philosophy.
Yeah...it's really tough. I actually did the challenge on my own (by accident really) when I was working on a project and then decided the following year to try the "official" version. BIG mistake I'm still paying for in some ways. Their closed message boards were echo-chambers of nastiness. God forbid you wrote anything other than queer speculative fantasy or the like...
The sad thing is I've found better writing communities once I left the realm of the "declared" writing forums. People who enjoy a particular TV show or fiction genre are often quite good at giving feedback, and they're nowhere near as locked into the dogma that's currently possessing parts of the fiction community. It's also fun to help them learn to get some of their own stories down...so many of the writing forums are also excessively hostile to newcomers or new writers.
Dang, that’s awful!
It sucks to see writing focused communities all about censorship when writing should be about having the bravery to present challenging ideas. The diversity conundrum is a mess too - You have to represent those POVs, yet you can’t write those POVs, and it basically creates a trap where writers feel they may as well give up…
NaNo has also disappointed me over the years. They stopped legitimately treating it like a challenge and replaced their attitude with a bunch of “We’re all winners in our own way!” nonsense, which sucks as NaNo is one of the best ways someone can improve as a writer if taken seriously. And I definitely noticed the emails get all diversity-oriented, which also definitely happened at the cost of no longer receiving much practical writing advice. I love the exercise but never use the site anymore.
I try to find writing forums now that still agree to do the challenge together but actually have a writer-friendly culture. It’s hard, since they all wind up sliding off the rails in the end, but I pray that some of the forums I’m in now will have the courage to stay viewpoint neutral or at least accept not everyone shares the same philosophy.
Yeah...it's really tough. I actually did the challenge on my own (by accident really) when I was working on a project and then decided the following year to try the "official" version. BIG mistake I'm still paying for in some ways. Their closed message boards were echo-chambers of nastiness. God forbid you wrote anything other than queer speculative fantasy or the like...
The sad thing is I've found better writing communities once I left the realm of the "declared" writing forums. People who enjoy a particular TV show or fiction genre are often quite good at giving feedback, and they're nowhere near as locked into the dogma that's currently possessing parts of the fiction community. It's also fun to help them learn to get some of their own stories down...so many of the writing forums are also excessively hostile to newcomers or new writers.