Six Years of Writing

Six years ago Lisa, Jon, Shawn and myself met up at a Science Fiction class at The Loft, taught by Lyda Morehouse. We instantly recognized each other as kindred spirits and started a writing group (I think it was Shawn’s idea, really, but as usual, we all went along with it). Because the universe can only handle so much bad grammar, it sent us Claudia to balance things out.

During that time we’ve met once or twice each month and have each grown a lot as writers (and critiquers—is that really a word, Claudia? You’ll know).  Each of us has completed at least one novel length manuscript during that time, in some cases more than one. Dozens of short stories have been written, and even a few poems and a novella. All this work has been routed and discussed through our group, novel-length revisions have been made multiple times. To say the least we work hard and are committed to our craft, despite the lack of pay.

There are rejections, sure, lots of them. Lisa has even made it a personal goal to get a bunch of them this year (20?). But there are also signs that our work is paying off. There have been promising conversations with agents and editors—and a few requests to see more. There have been some writing awards (Mark) and even some publications (Jon). We’ve even self-published a “sample book” featuring some of our writing and together gave a presentation at a Sci-Fi convention on what it is to have a great writing group. Over time all this attention to writing seems to be leading us in the right direction.

Part of our writing routine has been posting to this blog—although in the last year we really haven’t been very reliable on that front. But, in six years we’ve published 224 blog posts with over 42,000 page views and 675 comments. That’s a lot of conversation about writing!

In case you’d like to go back and see some of our more popular blog posts, here are some highlights, featuring the top two posts for each Scribblerati agent.

The Scribblerati’s Top Posts of All Time

Two Years Later by Jon Hansen
Our number one post of all time… showing what we were up to four (!) years ago. Maybe we should have Jon do an update?

Book Review: Joe Abercrombie's The Heroes by Jon Hansen

Dinosaurs vs. Humans by Mark Teats (Mark’s top post)

Good vs. Evil: Getting to Know Angels & Devils by Mark Teats

In Praise of Big Noses by Q aka Claudia Hankin (Claudia’s top post)

The Random Post by Shawn Enderlin (Shawn’s top post)

The Great Word Debate by Claudia Hankin (tied for most commented-on post, but also a generator of a number of other 'spin-off' posts)

My pseudo-review of Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me by Shawn Enderlin

On Words, Big and Li'l, All Those I do not Know by Lisa Bergin (Lisa’s top post)

The Little Words Can Throw You Too by Lisa Bergin

So happy anniversary Q, Shawn, Lisa and Jon. It’s been a great six years and I for one appreciate all the support, feedback and ideas that our group constantly gives to each other. More importantly I always look forward to reading what you’ll write next. Damn we’re good.

By the way: it’s now your turn on the blog.

Mark

@ManOwords