this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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โœ๏ธ Writing

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A community for writers, like poems, fiction, non-fiction, short stories, long books, all those sorts of things, to discuss writing approaches and what's new in the writing world, and to help each other with writing.

Rules for now:

1. Try to be constructive and nice. When discussing approaches or giving feedback to excerpts, please try to be constructive and to maintain a positive vibe. For example, don't just vaguely say something is bad but try to list and explain downsides, and if you can, also find some upsides. However, this is not to say that you need to pretend you liked something or that you need to hide or embellish what you disliked.

2. Mention own work for purpose and not mainly for promo: Feel free to post asking for feedback on excerpts or worldbuilding advice, but please don't make posts purely for self promo like a released book. If you offer professional services like editing, this is not the community to openly advertise them either. (Mentioning your occupation on the side is okay.) Don't link your excerpts via your website when asking for advice, but e.g. Google Docs or similar is okay. Don't post entire manuscripts, focus on more manageable excerpts for people to give feedback on.

3. What happens in feedback or critique requests posts stays in these posts: Basically, if you encounter someone you gave feedback to on their work in their post, try not to quote and argue against them based on their concrete writing elsewhere in other discussions unless invited. (As an example, if they discuss why they generally enjoy outlining novels, don't quote their excerpts to them to try to prove why their outlining is bad for them as a singled out person.) This is so that people aren't afraid to post things for critique.

4. All writing approaches are valid. If someone prefers outlining over pantsing for example, it's okay to discuss up- and downsides but don't tell someone that their approach is somehow objectively worse. All approaches are on some level subjective anyway.

5. Solarpunk rules still apply. The general rules of solarpunk of course still apply.

Click here to visit our solarpunk writing resource wiki!

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Welcome to the 17th writing club update!

Before launching into the writing club, I have a little preview of something @JacobCoffinWrites has spearheaded: a wiki resource for solarpunk writers who are looking for realistic visions of the hopeful world to be. You might have noticed a new link to the ๐ŸŽ‰ this brand new writing wiki ๐ŸŽ‰ in our community sidebar. Anyway, I'll let the intro speak for itself here:

Writing aspirational fiction is hard. If you're trying to write a better world, you need to build actual, workable, solutions into your setting and that requires so much knowledge to do well. Descriptions in a single solarpunk scene on a pedestrianized city street could involve a mix of civil engineering, history, cultural knowledge, plant knowledge, city planning, accessibility outreach, mass transit vehicle design/infrastructure, and more. A whole story might add in permaculture practices, modern airship design and operation, phytoremediation, or all kinds of other stuff! Compare that to cyberpunk where there's both a sort of cultural familiarity to lean on, and a pass on bad ideas because you're writing in a dystopian setting, and the differences are pretty clear.

It's a lot for any one writer to try and take on. Luckily we don't have to work alone. Any future worth building is going to be pretty collaborative and consensus-driven, so it makes sense to build our depictions of it the same way.

(On that final note, we're still trying to figure out a way to let people contribute to this wiki.)


But back to the seventeenth writing club, in the sage words of chapter 17: Communicating with a PostScript Printer (page 571) of Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, by Richard Stevens, /* don't want to write() to block */ -- but isn't that just the thing? Sometimes you have to write() in order to get through the block.

Speakering of writing(), here are our writer[]:

As is it ever has been and will eternally be, blessed randos should feel totally free to drop in with their updates, or comments on the goings ons of others. This little writing club thrives on our interactions, so go interact!

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[โ€“] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My goal... remains unchanged ๐Ÿ™ˆ I did some thinking about my story, but no real work (despite a friend even reaching out to offer to brainstorm with me!). Just in other personal news, though, I've really picked up my job search again--trying to find something full-time before the end of the year, and it looks like I might have found something in eduTech. ๐Ÿคฉ ๐ŸŽ“ So fingers crossed there.

I'm hoping once I have a full-time income that I'll be able to, like, really focus on relaxing / being creative during the evenings and weekends, rather than thinking about how I should be searching for a job. We'll see!

[โ€“] hazeebabee@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Having a job search looming in the back of your mind definetly sounds like it would dampen creative efforts! Good luck getting something sorted so that you can really focus on your creative energies :)

Also I want to say you always do such a great job keeping the writing group going and encouraging everyone who posts. Such a kind and motivational energy

[โ€“] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago

Thank you so much. ๐Ÿฅฐ

[โ€“] JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

As grrgyle mentioned, they graciously agreed to use the built-in /c/writing docuwiki site to host writer-level resources/notes! So most of my project time this month has been working on getting that set up, starting by copying over the resources I'd already made and updating them. Then I started reconstructing my notes and research from recent solarpunk projects. That turned out to be more of an archival effort than I'd expected because the Internet is getting worse but I think I've got enough content added that hopefully you can see what I'm going for.

I'm thinking of this as a kind of 'soft launch' of the new wiki for our regulars - I plan to add a few more pages and then do a standalone post announcing it to the community. I'll be soliciting input then too but if you want to contribute something, whether that's a page of notes or a single bullet point, I'd love to hear from you! It's currently very biased towards my solarpunk interests, with some absolutely massive gaps. There's no way one person can cover everything and I really hope others will contribute their own specialities.

Unfortunately the docuwiki system only allows for community moderators to make edits, but feel free to message me with anything you want to add and I'll be happy to change it over to docuwiki's markup and add it!

[โ€“] Clockwork@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's an incredible resource and I will definitely try and use it for my future stories! Thank you for all the time and effort you put into this.

For sure! I'm really excited to get the chance to build a bigger, more thorough version, and to hopefully start something of a culture of sharing resources in the solarpunk fiction space. I've got a few more pages I'm working on, and I've reached out to a few knowledgeable folks who I hope will contribute their own specialty.

[โ€“] ellie@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I actually got back into writing, and did a huge revision with multiple medium importance fixes to the second book of the trilogy. They weren't really plotholes, but sections where the characters didn't have as much of a clear goal as I like, causing the pacing to feel somewhat meandering. And I added some fun change that doesn't really objectively improve the writing, but which I love. The third book is still not fully drafted and I think I'll return to that soon, either around christmas or early next year. The hope is still to release the trilogy some time next year, although I might be running slightly late on that. Which wouldn't be a big deal, but I do wanna finish the drafting soon since I'm better at revising a really long running project than I am at keeping drafting more for it, and I could e.g. already start a new project once the trilogy is at the revisions-only stage. That might be fun to spice things up.

[โ€“] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago

causing the pacing to feel somewhat meandering.

This is something I notice in a lot of fiction (books, movies, shows, etc; stories, in short). That "meandering" sense, which I dunno maybe it can work for really character-driver works, but either way it's harder to the reader to hold their attention if things don't seem to be happening in a cause-and-effect way that they can follow.

RE starting a new project, are you at the point with this one where you are getting lots of ideas for different projects? I get that a lot, anyway.

So exciting that your trilogy is well underway!

[โ€“] Clockwork@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I spent an ungodly amount of time in school last month (for my teaching practice), and I've only written... slides for my lectures ๐Ÿ˜… ...which was an absolute blast! I even closed it out with a legendary story of our understanding of light, from optics to quantum mechanics, and the students loved it! This overshadows the disastrous failure of the crowdfunding campaign for the other book, from which I finally feel free. This last month will be entirely dedicated to writing Section B of the Kanteletar novel, which I can hopefully complete before New Year's Eve.

So yeah, nothing new on the fiction front, but I got to try my hand at scientific outreach writing and I should absolutely do it again at some point!

[โ€“] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago

That sounds so rewarding! I'm glad you had a good month, even if it wasn't doing "traditional" writing. Good luck on Section B!

[โ€“] solbear@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I would love to see that story of our understanding of light!

[โ€“] Clockwork@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I can share the slides but since it was a lesson most of the things I said them by voice, including the experiments we performed in class ๐Ÿ˜”

[โ€“] solbear@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 weeks ago

Thanks anyway, the slides hint at the general topic of each slide at least :) Seems like a fun lecture!

[โ€“] thegreenman@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Hi! Really glad I found this community :) I've decided to start writing, and because of my ADHD I needed to impose myself a deadline, or I'll never get anything done, so I've decided that I'm going to write a little TTRPG game, and debut a playable preview of it on a local gaming convention at the end of March. In solarpunk-related stuff, I have an idea for two solarpunk short stories, so I hope to have a draft of at least one of them this year, will be very interested in getting proofreaders ;) Hi again, good to be here!

[โ€“] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Very exciting stuff! I look forward to reading your solarpunk draft soon if you get round to it! โœŒ๏ธ

[โ€“] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago

Welcome to the writing club! For drafts or snippets, I can recommend https://pads.slrpnk.net/ for quickly sharing anything that is too long to fit in a comment. I'd love to proofread a new draft!

Sounds like you've got some great measurable goals there. I look forward to hearing your update next month. :)

[โ€“] solbear@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I've been on a "hiatus" for some time, if you can call taking time off something I hadn't spent too much time on to begin with a hiatus. Much going on on the work front, which has pretty much drained all my energy and creative energies, and what I've had left have gone towards off-screen activities like music. But I'm starting to feel some motivation seeping back, and as a weird run-up to what I hope will be some writing over the holidays, I'm trying to set up Neovim on my laptop and getting used to the keybindings, and besides coding use that for writing (Markdown and LaTeX).

Speaking of, how are you all setup for writing?

[โ€“] Clockwork@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Obsidian for notes and plans, worldbuilding on my personal site and LibreOffice for the actual text.

Sometimes I'm on the move and I have to sketch something down, so I send it to myself on Telegram and then move it to Obsidian once I can use the PC again.

[โ€“] solbear@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You don't like using Obsidian on mobile?

Also, are you using LibreOffice because you use it for typesetting that final product, or because you prefer to write the actual text there vs. in Obsidian?

[โ€“] Clockwork@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 weeks ago

I haven't tried Obsidian on mobile actually, so I'll give it a shot maybe!

As for LibreOffice, both reasons! Typesetting, more options, and partially comfort too

[โ€“] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think that counts as a "hiatus" if only because if it doesn't then I have a lot to answer for. :P

Speaking of, how are you all setup for writing?

I use neovim as well! I've been using vim for a long time, and I find the keybinding great for navigating prose ({} for jumping over paragraphs, () for sentences, etc). I'm experimenting with the following plugins: vim-pencil, limelight, goyo, as well as some others, unrelated to writing. Although personally I would recommend you be judicious about adding plugins to your .vimrc, because they can quickly get out of hand. I also use the kitty terminal for easy splitting of the view, as well as for the animated cursor_trail, which makes it easier to visually track the cursor jumping all over when you're using vim motions. :)

Good luck with your writing. It's great feeling the creative energies coming on, and then choosing how to direct them! :)

[โ€“] solbear@slrpnk.net 2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Nice to hear it is serving you well! I will take a look at those plugins as well, but yes, I can imagine it can quickly get out of hand. Currently I am just patiently going through the Neovim Tutor whenever I have the time, and have set it up using the kickstart configuration (which comes with a handful of plugins) and will go through the init.lua file later. I will also prioritize setting it up for coding as I want to switch at work but can't really do it before I have a somewhat functional workflow going.

Currently using LaTeX through VS Code, but having tasted the power of the vim keybindings, it keeps calling me to switch! (I know there are some vim-extensions for VS Code, but I anyway want to move away from it)

[โ€“] hazeebabee@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Iml haven't been very creatively focused. I've been settling into a new job and getting certifications sorted. Im hoping to pass my certification this month & hopefully things will settle down enough that ill have the extra brain power to be creative.

Its always so motivating hearing about what other people are up to and how their creative efforts are panning out. Even if I'm not writing, I like hearing from people who are :)

[โ€“] grrgyle@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Good luck on your certification, and I totally agree--I love hearing everyone's updates especially when I haven't been able to do much myself. And of course, it makes me feel better feeling from other people who haven't had the bandwidth to be creative this month, too. :)