Welcome to the seventh writing club update!
Happy new year!!! 🎉🎉🎉 I was just getting used to drawing the “4” in “2024” in my notebooks, and now I have to get used to a whole new number. I always liked “5” though, so hopefully we get along alright.
As always I hope everyone has had a good month (but not so good as to leave nothing to stoke the fires of creativity).
Anyway, on with the important part - the Writers!
- @grrgyle - January goal
- @hazeebabee - January goal
- @JacobCoffinWrites - January goal
- @okasen - January goal
I can’t wait to hear from you all. Your updates no matter how trivial always manage to motivate me for the next month.
As always, anyone and everyone are welcome to comment or share their own work in addition to the club participants above.
I didn’t really follow my goal at all for last month lol. I was busy over the holidays and didn’t write at all, then the first half of January I’ve spent distracted by a couple of topics I got inspired by.
One of the topics centers around liminal spaces and horror. I’m not sure if the final product I make from all this research will actually be an essay or if it is going to shape up into a fiction piece. I’m kind of just enjoying getting lost in the genre and taking notes on different aspects of it.
The other thing I’ve fallen into is the history of communism and cults of personality. Trying to look at the history of why many of these movements end up authoritarian despite the good intentions of their founding. The also includes looking at why democracy is often seen as the antithesis of communism when I would think it’s more communism vs capitalism and authoritarian vs democratic. I found some really interesting books on the topic (both fiction and non fiction) and have been diving into them. This area might also end up being a few essays, but will likely more so be back ground research for some of the fictional worlds I’ve been building.
This month I want to keep diving into this stuff and hopefully next month will have something to share that isn’t just messy handwritten notes lol.
Happy new year to everyone, I hope January hasn’t been too scary for you :)
That sounds like you’ve done a lot of interesting reading and thinking at least.
I suspect if you forced yourself to just sit down and write on the subject more would come out than you’d expect.
Super true! Hopefully this weekend I’ll be able to take a few hours and just write through some of my thoughts. I think your right and my ideas will be alot more formed than they feel right now :)
No lie, that sounds like a great time to me! Sometimes I label these periods as “filling the well” or planting seeds for when I go to do some creative expression. Even if they’re not directly related to my current project, it’s all grist for the mill (to borrow another expression).
I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this. I’ve just recently started more formally reading an intro to Marx, and I’m finding it pretty compelling. I’ve skimmed the Wikipedia pages of course, but that’s not the same as really studying the subject.
I did corner two communists at a house party this month and try to get a sense of where they stand on social democracy, but I think they were not interesting in lecturing a newbie haha. I did come away with some questions on Maoism, though.
Anyway, so yeah, not to repeat myself, but yeah I would love to hear whatever you put together, fictional or otherwise on the topic. It’s fascinating to me, and as someone who doesn’t actually know much on the topic I’m still hungry for more takes!
G- g- g- gulp! Hahaha, but for real liminal spaces are a form of creepiness I adore. The concept of something going on forever in this weird unknowable order, is super scary and un-look-away-from-able to me. 🫣
Great goal! Fill that well hehe :)
I love the metaphores you used at the start :) filling the well is definetly an important part of the process, plus it just feels good to have something to hyperfixate on lol
And yay! I’m glad there’s some interest in the my current focuses :) I’m curious to see where I end up with all of it. Sometimes it’s fun when even i don’t know what I’m doing & suprise myself lol
Also very funny to imagine these cornered communists at a party being questioned about the nuances of their political beliefs by a well meaning but uninformed person :p i have a decent grasp of the theory (I commune hopped in my early 20s), but the actual history of its implementation is in some ways more interesting because it’s actually testing the theory & points to certain weakspots in the underlying ideology. I’m not sure where it’s all headed but I feel excited to find out :))
Edit to add: I’ll definetly try and do a write up this month to make some of my thoughts understandable l. It would be cool to have someone to bounce ideas back and forth with :)