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Welcome! If this is your first acquaintance with Write Club, you can learn about who we are and what we do. (TLDR: We are a small online writing workshop and open to new members who are highly committed to the workshop process.) This article also shares our latest writing prompt. If you’re seeking a writing workshop, you can check us out. Or feel free to just use our writing prompt for your own purposes.
About Write Club
We are a small workshop community of short story writers with a focus on writing for professional publications. We are committed to publishing our work in mainstream magazines, professional online journals and short story anthologies. Some of our members are successfully published, and others are on their way, with the help of the honest yet caring critiques from our workshop members.
If you are a writer of short fiction looking to improve your chances of being professionally published, read on!
Each month we launch a new writing prompt. Write Club members write a short story based on the prompt, and then review and critique each other’s stories. This requirement is central to who we are. Every writer needs an outside eye and voice to see what they may have missed, and learn from others. We all get stuck inside our own perspectives, and this invaluable feedback can make all the difference in taking a story from promising to published. The next phase is to revise our own stories based on the workshop feedback, and (optionally) do another round of critiques. This method helps us to prepare our manuscripts for professional editors.
If you are a short story writer and are intrigued by Write Club, here are two options:
- Watch for our monthly writing prompts. Feel free to use them to inspire your short stories. You can post them on Hive, Medium, Vocal, your WordPress blog, or wherever you like. Note that we do not offer critiques for those who are not members of our workshop. This is just for inspiration!
- If you are serious about short story writing and want to submit your work to publications such as literary, sci-fi or horror magazines, you are also welcome to check out our Write Club workshop.
Is the Write Club Workshop Right for You?
Write Club purposefully remains small. This enables us to read and provide thoughtful critiques on every story. However, we have nearly always have room for a few additional writers who are looking for a writing community and want to get their work published professionally.
If you’re interested, the next step is to review the prerequisites:
- You should already have a strong foundation in short story writing, excellent English skills, and a desire to continue your development as a fiction writer.
- You should have the goal of publishing your work in professional publications.
- You must be ready to commit to monthly deadlines, including drafting and revising stories.
- You must be willing to provide helpful feedback to other writers and support their journey as well as your own.
- Most importantly, you must have an open mind to accept critique of your own work so that you can revise and polish your stories.
To connect with us and check out our workshop, just pop in as a visitor to our Discord channel and tell us about your interests. We would love to connect with you to see if it seems like we’re a good fit for your writing journey!
Our July, 2023 Writing Prompt
That brings us to the prompt. For the month of July, Write Club members must write a story based on this prompt: swimming
Where will this prompt take you? Ah, swimming. A right of passage for children — learning to swim. Jumping in the pool. Playing in the ocean. Swimming can be joyful or terrifying. After all, there’s a reason Jaws was so frightening when it came out in 1975. A story centered on the topic of swimming could delve into a childhood drama at a summer camp. It could deal with a really tough subject, like the loss of a child like Tom Cruise’s character in Minority Report. And of course plenty of romance stories have erotic swimming scenes. What about the story of a would-be Olympic swimmer? So many options.
Get Your Engines Running
Start thinking about who will populate your story, and how they might seek to overcome a challenge they are facing. The more your conscious and sub-conscious brain are working on developing your MC (main character), and defining the scenario that has brought us to the time and place of this story, the sooner your story will take shape.
You could write out some loglines — one-sentence story plots — and then choose the one that resonates the most with you. Or, as a member, you could join our discussion on Discord and get input on which idea seems like the most promising one to move forward.
Looking for Writing Resources?
I love to share tips and ideas about creative writing! Here are two treasure troves for you:
- You can find many of my tips and resources on my website, in the On Writing section.
- I also share writing tips in The Ink Well community on Hive. See the complete catalog for the full list of articles.
Have fun and keep writing.