I do my writing in between the cracks of a fulltime job, four dogs, two horses, and the renovation of our house, in which a lot of the work is done by my husband and myself. So yes, my writing time is precious. Very much so. However, most evenings, at least one hour of my time, and sometimes more, is not spent drafting, revising, or editing. Not exclusively. That time is spent in an online writing community, where I am one of the founding members.
For some people who, like me, live in a part of the world where English is not a prevalent language, where cons are few and far between and writing groups even more of an oddity, these online groups are pretty much the only opportunity we have to interact with other writers on a regular basis.
When we first started out, our community had a whopping ten members, give or take, and already we spanned the globe. We had several members living in the US and a strong contingent of at least four people in Europe and Asia, jokingly called the night shift.
But as we built a website, ventured onto Twitter and Reddit, and started promoting our community, our ranks grew and our modest little Discord server sprouted channels left and right. And one thing we always agreed on is that we want to be welcoming to new members.
We want no one to feel unseen, unheard, or unimportant.
I think we’re doing something right, as our membership continues to expand. As of now, eighteen months into our collective journey, we have just over two hundred members. And what I love the most about them is that they are so so wonderfully diverse, and they feel absolutely comfortable talking about their similarities and differences.
We are a home away from home for members of the PoC community, for those who identify as LGBTQIA+, people for whom English is a second language, neurodivergent folks…
If you write, or if you want to write but are struggling to find the courage, then you have a place with us.
As a group, we have a large number of activities going on all the time. We trade critiques, but we also brainstorm when one of us needs help, and we have word sprints to help you get that draft out on the page. Sometimes, it’s as simple as listening to music together in one of our voice channels while you’re writing. Experienced rejectomancers are always at hand to engage in this fine and honorable art. We commiserate when a rejection comes in and cheer for every acceptance.
We laugh together, cry together, and most of all, we are there for each other, constantly pushing each other onwards and upwards.
Nothing makes me prouder than to have stood at the cradle of the INKubator, and to be at hand when a moderator is needed, though that is rarely the case. Nothing brings me more joy than to see a 15-year-old writer’s happiness over an accepted drabble, or to see one of our members adopting the pronoun roles we implemented on the server to avoid misgendering and show that we actively work at being allies.
And so, the writing time I sacrifice doesn’t feel like a sacrifice at all. It’s a joy and a treasure that I hope to have for a long time to come. If you’re considering starting up a similar initiative, I can only advise you to give it a try. It enriches you and your writing in more ways than you thought possible.
If that thought overwhelms you, why not join an existing community? Not every group is the same, and neither is every writer. Gods know we can play and banter as hard as we work and some may find that a bit overwhelming.
There’s only one way to find out whether the water is too hot, too cold, or just right, and that’s by dipping your toes in.
If you’d like to learn more about the INKubator, you could have a look at our website, but the best way to get to know us is by stopping by for a visit.
BIO:Â Writer, poet, and narrator Jasmine Arch lives in the Belgian countryside with two horses, four dogs, and a husband who knows better than to distract her when she’s writing.
She grew up devouring her brother’s collection of sci-fi and fantasy novels, and her love of the written word in all its incarnations goes back further than her memories and knows no rivals, except the long-suffering husband, though coffee and shoes come pretty close.
Her work has appeared in Illumen Magazine, The Other Stories, and Quatrain Fish, among other places. Find out more about her at jasminearch.com, or connect with her on Twitter @Jaye_Arch.
This was a guest blog post. Interested in blogging here?
Assembling an itinerary for a blog tour? Promoting a book, game, or other creative effort that’s related to fantasy, horror, or science fiction and want to write a guest post for me?
Alas, I cannot pay, but if that does not dissuade you, here’s the guidelines.
Guest posts are publicized on Twitter, several Facebook pages and groups, my newsletter, and in my weekly link round-ups; you are welcome to link to your site, social media, and other related material.
Send a 2-3 sentence description of the proposed piece along with relevant dates (if, for example, you want to time things with a book release) to cat AT kittywumpus.net. If it sounds good, I’ll let you know.
I prefer essays fall into one of the following areas but I’m open to interesting pitches:
Interesting and not much explored areas of writing
Writers or other individuals you have been inspired by
Your favorite kitchen and a recipe to cook in it
A recipe or description of a meal from your upcoming book
Women, PoC, LGBT, or otherwise disadvantaged creators in the history of speculative fiction, ranging from very early figures such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Wollstonecraft up to the present day.
Women, PoC, LGBT, or other wise disadvantaged creators in the history of gaming, ranging from very early times up to the present day.
F&SF volunteer efforts you work with
Length is 500 words on up, but if you’ve got something stretching beyond 1500 words, you might consider splitting it up into a series.
When submitting the approved piece, please paste the text of the piece into the email. Please include 1-3 images, including a headshot or other representation of you, that can be used with the piece and a 100-150 word bio that includes a pointer to your website and social media presences. (You’re welcome to include other related links.)
Or, if video is more your thing, let me know if you’d like to do a 10-15 minute videochat for my YouTube channel. I’m happy to handle filming and adding subtitles, so if you want a video without that hassle, this is a reasonable way to get one created. ???? Send 2-3 possible topics along with information about what you’re promoting and its timeline.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
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"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Guest Post: B. Morris Allen on Writing in Harmony
Writing is inherently frustrating, because it’s a process of condensing imagination into prose”“taking countless colours and dimensions of dreaming and stripping them down to a few crude black and white stick drawings that readers can expand back in their own imagination. It’s like using an asterisk to describe a snowflake”“all you can hope to get across is the basic idea, and the hope that the audience will see something beautiful, even if it’s not exactly what you saw.
I’ve long been interested in the how this works”“not the practicalities of construction and grammar (though those are important)”“but the mental mechanics of winnowing down world into story and back again. As many writers do, I’ve tried a few tricks to get at this”“for example, telling the same story at different lengths while still keeping it interesting, or telling a story entirely in the aftermath of key scenes. When I became an editor, though, it occurred to me that I had an opportunity to study the process more broadly empirically.
The result, thanks to the hard work and goodwill of several dozen authors, is what I’ve now grouped under the imprint Verdage”“books that are, first and foremost, anthologies of great SFF, but that also look at the writing process. The first in the series was Reading 5X5, in which five groups of five authors each approached the same theme, to see how different authors work with the same material. The second, Score: an sff symphony, asked twenty authors to write stories from a common emotional score, so that while the concepts and settings are all over the place, each story evokes specific emotions on a path to goes from joy to despair and back to hope.
The latest installment from Verdage, out 1 August 2020, is Reading 5X5 x2: Duets. For this anthology, I asked five talented authors: Douglas Anstruther, L’Erin Ogle, J. Tynan Burke, David Gallay, and Evan Marcroft, to co-write a story with each of the others, as well as a solo story. The substantive results are everything I expected”“stories of loss and passion, of abandoned alien spaceships, of cross-galaxy revenge, of demonic software and clockwork universes.
Just as interesting, though, is the other purpose of the anthology”“looking at how authors’ voices change when they collaborate. Most of the authors hadn’t collaborated before, and each pair found its own mechanism for doing so”“all different, all effective”“chronicled in authors’ notes at the end of the book. Read any of the authors’ solo stories and compare that voice with how they sound writing with any of the others, and with how that second author sounds solo”“it’s a fascinating study in what makes an author’s voice what it is.
Writing is a careful process of culling and filtering decisions, using a (literally 🙂 ) limited alphabet to convey infinities of universe, emotion, and action. Doing that jointly with another person who pronounces all the letters a little differently can be a difficult process. But the resulting harmony of voices can not only have a unique beauty of its own, but can show us something new about how each of the voices sound on their own. I hope this anthology does that.
BIO:Â B. Morris Allen grew up in a house full of books that traveled the world. Nowadays, they’re e-books, and lighter to carry, but they’re still multiplying. He’s been a biochemist, an activist, and a lawyer, and now works as a foreign aid consultant. When he’s not roaming foreign countries fighting corruption, he’s on the Oregon coast, chatting with seals. In the occasional free moment, he works on his own speculative stories of love and disaster.
So, as a middle schooler, I thought that Awesomewriter65 would be the perfect username for my Wattpad. I had then started writing Happy Endings.
This story was practically my baby. I worked out ever single detail I could and planned it to the tee. Even though I have everything for it planned, I still have not finished my entire novel. I have been rewriting, revising and planning this entire universe since I was in the sixth grade. Cover made for me by a fellow writer on Wattpad.
Since publishing chapters of Happy Endings on Wattpad, so far I have gathered over 1k in views. In honor of the many years I have been posting chapters of Happy Endings, I thought I’d share with you my favorite scene from Happy Endings.
Before I share the excerpt, I should probably tell you what my story is about. This summary was pulled from my Wattpad account:
Another cover made by a fellow writer on Wattpad.“Life hits Rebecca Waters and Philip Waters in the face when their mom gets thrown in prison. With their mom in prison and their dad gone their older brother Eddie takes them in. Growing up with a drug dealing mom was hard enough, but after the arrest it was even harder being raised by their brother who was still growing up himself despite his age.
Over the years once the kids watched as their older brother grew up from a rebellious teenager to a loving husband with a stable job and a baby. One mishap; their mother is released from prison on good behavior and is ready to fight for custody.
If that can’t get any worse, Rebecca struggles with the idea of falling in love and the drama of high school. Thankfully Phil and Rebecca have their best friends to stick besides beside them. But when things start to look up, it all falls down. The twins’ mom hires scheming lawyer Shane Russo to plead their case and let their mom win. As he gets close to Rebecca and her weird family, Shane soon learns that he suddenly cares for this family which makes the battle even harder. Not only that, but Shane deals with his own inner demons.
Will they be able to stick together?”
Now, the following is an interaction between the lawyer, Shane, and the twins’ sister-in-law, Angie. If you have any interest in reading more, follow my Wattpad page and check out my posts there.Yet, another amazing cover made by another member of the Wattpad community.
“Shane stayed in a dirty motel a few blocks away from a few restaurants. This was his first custody case. Shane mostly worked with cases in which someone sued someone else. The only thing he hoped for is not bonding with the twins. That would be horrible. He was hired by the twins’ mom to represent them, but somehow let their mom win. For the sake of the case, and for the sake of him getting his money, he had to let their mom win and had to not get attached to the two teens.
As he threw his clothes in the dirty dresser that smelled like mold, he hoped the dresser wouldn’t ruin his clothes. The room was dark and dusty. There was one bed and a dresser and a square T.V. There was a bathroom, a small one at that. The room was quiet. It was almost too quiet. He could hear his own heart beat. It was a nervous heartbeat. It was a guilty heartbeat. The kind of heartbeat you get after someone gets furious with you and you’re afraid they’ll never forgive you.
All he had left in his brown matted up suitcase was a couple of black shirts and some socks. He shook, startled when he heard a knock at his room door. Shane stood silently hoping the knocking would go away and he could watch T.V. His body was like a deer when it sees headlights. Only fear pumped his blood. The knocking soon turned into banging and he gave in and slowly walked to open the door. When he opened the door, he saw a short British woman with dark red hair crossing her arms. Her arms were crossed and anger spread across her face.
Shane put on a fake face to hide his fear. ‘Hey, dollface,’ He said to her. ‘How ya doin’?’
Angela jabbed her pointer finger at Shane’s chest yelling, ‘You’re a fraud!’ She backed him up into the room and slammed the door behind her.
Shane crossed his arms, ‘What in the world are you on about?’ He snapped.
‘What am I on about? Don’t act like you don’t know,’ she replied in a irritated voice.
Shane threw his hands in the air. ‘Well if I’m an actor, you might as well give me an Oscar!’ He replied sarcastically in an almost shouting voice.
He tried to ignore Angela so he walked his way to the mini fridge in his motel. Angie still stood, silently judging him. Angela knows how to get information outta of people. She does it for a living. She can flash the opposing side in a courtroom a look and she can get the information out of people.
Angela is an honest person. She doesn’t believe in lying and she can sniff it out a liar from miles away.
‘Shane Russo, don’t you dare mess with me. I uncovered all your dirty little secrets.’
Shane stopped in his tracks as he opened the bottle of beer.
‘What do you know about me?’ His voice shook as he turned around to face her. He tried the best he could to as stay calm as he could, but in that moment it was hard to stay calm.
‘You’re just another sleazy lawyer!’ she accused.
‘I wouldn’t know what you’re talking about,’ He replied sipping his beer.
‘I have a very good friend who can dig up so much dirt about you. You may have Rebecca and Phil and maybe even Eddie a little, but I could see right through your ignorant smug look. I don’t trust you.’
Shane rolled his eyes at her. ‘Oh yeah?’ He tested.
‘You act like women don’t know how to do their research,’ Angie muttered under her breath.
Shane kept rolling his eyes at her. This whole conversation was like arguing with his siblings. The other one will just keep badgering him until he finally tells the truth. He didn’t want to give in, but if there is one thing he hates more than waking up before noon, it’s someone like Angie.
Granted, he knew what he was walking into when he signed up for this job. Laura gave him information of the family. Shane already knew what he needed to know. It was just a matter of time before he could put everything into action and do what he does best. One last awesome cover made for me by someone on Wattpad.
‘How’d you even find anything on me?’ Shane sighed giving in as he rubbed his temples. ‘Fine! You want the truth? I lie, okay? I bribe people and I do illegal things. And I like it.’
Angela was stunned and wide eyed. ‘I can’t believe you! How could you do that?’
Shane stifled a sarcastic laugh. ‘Look, dollface. There are two kinds of people out there. There are the Saints who want to do everything right. Then there are liars and I’m one of them.’
She pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘God, you’re horrible. I can’t believe I breathe the same air as you.’
Shane downed the rest of his beer he had been drinking and threw it in the trash can. He watched her as she circled the room, trying to wrap her head around the situation. Angela quickly tried thinking of solutions to fix the problem.
It seemed like everyone had goggles on in the house. They all thought this guy was their savior. To Angie, he was translucent and she could see right through him. She was even surprised that Phil and Eddie fell for Shane’s act.
‘You act like you do nothing wrong. You’re a sleaze and a scammer. I can’t believe that people like you exist””’
He pointed his finger at her, cutting her off and shouting, ‘You don’t know what it’s like for me. When I first started out I broke and I needed the cash. It’s easy to throw a little bribe here and there.’
Her hands ran through her red hair. ‘Everyone starts off at the bottom, Shane! It would’ve been fine if you just played fair! You didn’t have to base your cases off lies and bribes!’
‘You’re a lawyer too! You should know that we’re professional liars!’
‘We serve for justice. We can’t just feed lies. We need cold hard facts. Why’d you even take this case?’
She seemed more calm than before, but now she was more sad than angry, ‘Why’d you even take this case? Because their mom offered you a lot of money? I can see you need it.’ She looked around at the grimy hotel room.
‘Okay, yes she gave me money to fight in this custody case and yes I may be living in a crappy motel room. Sure, I’m broke at this moment in time, but I’m not who I was back then.’
Angela scoffed at this and rolled her eyes. She had every right to. She doubted that he was any different now. The reason he was broke is because he blows all his money. Mostly on gambling and drinking. The reason he took this job was because to him, it seemed like the perfect job for him. It was different and seemed easy enough where he could pass with flying colors. Plus, these days it seems like people love seeing children reunited with their biological mother.
‘But I’m also doing this because I really want to do this, and do something good for these kids,’ Shane lied and Angela just rolled her eyes. She could see right through this guy. She no idea why anyone would trust this him.
Must be his good looks, Angela thought to herself.
‘Listen here Shane Russo, these kids mean the world to Eddie. I’m pretty sure he loves them more than he loves himself. If I could, I’d be the lawyer in this case but I’m not,’ She walked up to him and stabbed his chest with her finger again.
‘He waited so long to get them back in his life and if you mess anything up for this family I will make sure that every detail I have on you is released to the public.’
Shane stopped in his tracks and stared at the short woman walking to the door, ‘So let me get this straight. You’re not okay with lying, but you’re okay with blackmailing me?’
Angela turned around before she walked out the door. She turned back about to speak again but only stared for a good few seconds at the middle-aged man. Then she shook her head and left. Shane watched her get in her car. He watched until she drove away.”
Lou is a writer of rom coms, eater of pizza, lover of 90s boybands and cat enthusiast. You can follow her on Twitter at @aweosmewriter.
BIO:Â Writer, poet, and narrator Jasmine Arch lives in the Belgian countryside with two horses, four dogs, and a husband who knows better than to distract her when she’s writing.
