Hello! This is an intro post!

[shakespeareandpunk]

Hello everyone and welcome to SomethingSoft, a low-pressure supportive writing group where our mission statement is, as Jacqui put it, “We’re here, we’re soft, we’re writing because everything is bad!”

Jacqui and I (Alice shakespeareandpunk) wanted to create a space for everyone to post writing of all kinds, where we could encourage conversation and friendly support. It doesn’t matter if you’re midway through a longterm project, starting something new or just looking to write freely - share your work here, give and receive encouraging feedback and follow whatever inspiration strikes you. 

Here are some quick guidelines to keep in mind as we get started. 

Posting 

We’ll be posting a short flash writing prompt to get us all started. We don’t plan for this to be a structured writing group dictated by exercises, this is just to break the ice and get our writing muscles flexing. We can chat about the idea of future exercises and sprints down the road. After the initial prompt, what follows will be a very lax process of sharing work when you’re ready. Post whatever you like: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and fan fic are all welcome!

When posting work, please tag everything accordingly (guidelines below). Please also put the majority of your post under a cut (feel free to include a brief introduction or snippet above the cut.) If you weren’t around for the LJ days, here is a short explanation of cuts. The cut button on the rich text editor looks like this: 

So you’ll post about a 50-word snippet, hit the ‘cut’ button and then the rest of your writing will follow. If you have specific questions/concerns about your piece, feel free to include those at the bottom to generate more tailored discussion, but don’t include so many that it dominates/directs the conversation - it’s just a fact that this leads to less helpful feedback.

Feedback

Please give feedback! We’re all here to write, but also to have our writing seen and engaged with. Don’t think of it as line edits - in fact, we hope to shy away from the strict nature of line edits here. Our goal is to generate discussion and to push each other to indulge in our own work. 

Above all, we just ask for your generosity. This is not a workshop and there is no set schedule. Write when you want to write, engage when you want to engage. Just be sure to be courteous to others’ and respectful of their time. We’re all in different time zones, on different schedules and dealing with the [gestures around] of it all. When you post a piece of writing, give it time to settle and breathe. The more space between posts, the more time people have to respond and generate thoughtful feedback. 

Tagging

Please tag posts with the following:

1. Your name (first, first and last OR username...just keep it consistent for archiving purposes)

2. Triggers (common ones apply, of course, and if you have any uncommon triggers please let us know here or in the Discord)

3. Project title (if applicable, so that your posts within a project can be linked together)

4. Writing challenge (if applicable. The intro flash writing exercise will be considered a challenge for tagging purposes)

If you haven’t already, please introduce yourself in the Discord! We hope that will be useful for the more social aspect of the group - we can video chat, ask each other questions and just generally shoot the shit about whatever we want. 

Please also feel free to say hi in a comment on this post, tell us more about your writing and what you hope to get out of this project!

The Intro Writing Exercise will be posted this Tuesday at 9 a.m. We’ll also be posting a roundup of writing resources that can be linked here and added onto as necessary. 

Can’t wait to get started! xoxo