Welcome to the 16th (5+5+5+1) writing club update. Looking at the intro to the 16th chapter of Procedural Generation in Game Design: Generative Art Toys by Kate Compton, we find the somewhat quaint observation:
Everyone loves being creative. And everyone likes discovering that they’re more creative than they thought they were. For many years, people have enjoyed crafts like pottery wheels, Spirographs, Mad Libs, spin art, paper marbling, and tie-dye. These artistic toys helped everyday people make interesting artworks (even if those people lacked creative talent or inspiration) by producing surprising and emergent results from simple choices.
Now that we have digital systems, we can make art toys with even more surprising and emergent behaviour. […]
This book (edited by Tanya Short, and Tarn Adams) was first published in 2017, long before the term “generative art” would take on a very different insinuation. I’ve certainly got some strong opinions on the subject of both interpretations, but this is a writing club update not my personal soapbox.
Having now fulfilled my self-imposed rule of introducing a quote related to the number of WC updates since we started, I now turn to an observation about my local climate/weather, before introducing our writers, and finally extending a friendly invitation to any lurkers in our midsts. :)
Up here in the Northern hemisphere, at the heel of October, it’s starting to get chilly. The ideal weather for reading and writing probably varies as much as the individual writer, but for me this feels like book weather.
Speaking of individuals, here is the call for our regular writers to share their updates!
I think I’ll move this list to the main Writing Club sticky post next update, since the @s don’t seem trigger notifications consistently across applications. Let me know what you think, if you have an opinion on this.
As is forever the case, passers-by are very welcome to come on in and lurk, comment, or post their own updates.
Welcome, stranger! What were you working on in previous months, before your writing ground to a halt? If you don’t mind me asking, anyway.
I definitely feel you on trouble writing. If you were to line up all my updates, I probably have more “off” than “on” months. But, y’know, the “on” months still come, and that’s something to look forward to.
Always nice to hear from a passer-by, and from another instance too, how exciting. :)
A sprawling post-Korra Avatar fanfic, lol. I am more than happy to ramble on about speculative Avatar lore.
Yep. I have short periods of furious writing followed by luls. The story itself is practically bursting out of my head, yet getting it on paper is the difficult part.
I suppose I’ll take the opportunity to massage/trim what I’ve posted so far, and ‘get me going’ again.
Ooooo super cool. Some of the avatar fan fics are so well made and interesting. Definetly a fertile ground for creativity :)
Hell. Yes. That awesome. I resisted the allure of reading and writing fanfic for too long. You’re definitely not alone in this thread – I know of at least two other people who are working on either fanfic, or projects that started out as fanfic and have morphed into their own thing.
The periods of furious writing and luls are so relatable, and so much like weather too. I wonder how common they are. I’m sure there must be many writers who experience this. It’s nice that you have a strategy for what to do when you’re not really to get the story on paper yet. I usually read more, or play videogames, but having a chunky story to massage/trim sounds like another great way to work on a story when you’re not in fully creative-generative-output mode.
Thanks! Yeah, my baseline behavior is basically:
I’m sure it manifests for others differently. Though the peculiar thing for me is that plot/imagination isn’t the problem as much as the minutia of the writing, like wording and dialogue. I have written one other 300k fic before (my only other), but I am trying to make this one less fanficy.
One thing I’ve discussed elsewhere is that there seemingly to be less interest in… reading long form fiction? On Ao3 and tumblr, most interest seems to be in one shots, shorts, social media competitions, stuff like that, and I’ve observed similar trends on TV, YouTube, and so on.
Hmmm I’m not sure. That seems to be the perception, for sure. And there is for sure a lot more short-form content now. But I feel like there is maybe the same amount of long-form content as well? Like I have no trouble finding long articles, long books, and long videos. Though I couldn’t really say if they’re more or less popular. I could see “snack” sized content certainly being easier to consume during little breaks, for sure though.
Anyway, that’s my gut take. Full disclosure I mostly write microfiction roffffl so I’m slightly biased.