It's interesting, because I've found I have less access to community now than I did, say, two years ago. I live in Australia so have limited access to large writing events, and in-person writing groups never worked out for me (e.g. SCWBI meetings were always awkward because it was always retired women looking to write picture books and t…
It's interesting, because I've found I have less access to community now than I did, say, two years ago. I live in Australia so have limited access to large writing events, and in-person writing groups never worked out for me (e.g. SCWBI meetings were always awkward because it was always retired women looking to write picture books and then... me, writing older YA and not even in my 20s. Uni classes and clubs also never worked out because of skill differential; I'd been writing novels since I was 15 and they were struggling to finish short stories), but I developed a network on Twitter where I made some great friends and could relatively easily find new beta readers/critique partners, and also was a member of a large regional NaNoWriMo Discord server where I happened to meet someone who is now one of my greatest friends.
However, when dear Elon took over Twitter and did whatever he did to the algorithm, I found my writing community suddenly vanished and whatever interactions I did have were overall negative - I've been ghosted and forced to block more people in the past year over beta reads than ever before. (I've also noticed that, as a person who's written 6 books now, the crowd I tend to find online are less experienced - maybe on book 1 or 2 - and can't give me the feedback I need to really push myself on a craft level.) And haven't been able to find a platform to replace it. The aforementioned Discord server also imploded the same year, and I've never been able to find the comradery I did there in a larger server again (I've joined some dedicated to pitch parties and things like Pitch Wars but been immediately overwhelmed by all of them). However, I am part of a very small server - which is fabulous, because I love everyone there, but also makes it difficult to find enough beta readers and critique partners because there are so few of us and not everyone can spare the time to read others' work. I have my trusted few people, but I don't know how I'm going to make beta reads for my next book work. It's a desperate thing, honestly: I want to connect with people who have a similar experience level as me so they can push me, who are professional, who won't take 4+ months to read 100k words or ghost me or send me nasty messages about my critiques. I daydream about being agented just so I can access agent siblings. But in the meantime, I'm lost about where to turn. I have my eye on QTCritique. But I don't have much hope that it'll actually work. We'll see.
It's interesting, because I've found I have less access to community now than I did, say, two years ago. I live in Australia so have limited access to large writing events, and in-person writing groups never worked out for me (e.g. SCWBI meetings were always awkward because it was always retired women looking to write picture books and then... me, writing older YA and not even in my 20s. Uni classes and clubs also never worked out because of skill differential; I'd been writing novels since I was 15 and they were struggling to finish short stories), but I developed a network on Twitter where I made some great friends and could relatively easily find new beta readers/critique partners, and also was a member of a large regional NaNoWriMo Discord server where I happened to meet someone who is now one of my greatest friends.
However, when dear Elon took over Twitter and did whatever he did to the algorithm, I found my writing community suddenly vanished and whatever interactions I did have were overall negative - I've been ghosted and forced to block more people in the past year over beta reads than ever before. (I've also noticed that, as a person who's written 6 books now, the crowd I tend to find online are less experienced - maybe on book 1 or 2 - and can't give me the feedback I need to really push myself on a craft level.) And haven't been able to find a platform to replace it. The aforementioned Discord server also imploded the same year, and I've never been able to find the comradery I did there in a larger server again (I've joined some dedicated to pitch parties and things like Pitch Wars but been immediately overwhelmed by all of them). However, I am part of a very small server - which is fabulous, because I love everyone there, but also makes it difficult to find enough beta readers and critique partners because there are so few of us and not everyone can spare the time to read others' work. I have my trusted few people, but I don't know how I'm going to make beta reads for my next book work. It's a desperate thing, honestly: I want to connect with people who have a similar experience level as me so they can push me, who are professional, who won't take 4+ months to read 100k words or ghost me or send me nasty messages about my critiques. I daydream about being agented just so I can access agent siblings. But in the meantime, I'm lost about where to turn. I have my eye on QTCritique. But I don't have much hope that it'll actually work. We'll see.