New: "I Love Writing"

great board
admin cool boy!

I Love Writing exists no more. Following the link above takes you into la-la land. I don't know what velko was thinking.

what happened to it?

I don't know if I love writing or not. I like it when I do it, which isn't often. I was planning a post with a few musings on that in the next few days, but it'll be going on the 'Franzen's Harper's Essay' thread. Stay tuned.

i'd like to see this board ressurected. i also love writing ressurected wrongly.

The underwhelming response to this thread seems to be the answer to the question, what happened to it?

I would think about posting on an I Love Writing

revive

# Where do you write at?
# Do you keep a journal?
# Getting your work published...
# Does posting on ILX take away from your *real* writing?

And then,

Show me threads that were last updated in the last week.
Show me threads that were last updated in the week before last.
Show me threads that were last updated between two and three weeks ago.
Show me threads that were last updated between three and four weeks ago.

Can't we switch over the topics from the board to here, or start 'ILW' type topics on ILB?

After all books and writing have a few things to do with one another.

Where do you write at?

mostly my apt at dining-room table while family are at work/school/etc. sometime wherever on the laptop.

Do you keep a journal?

have done at times but not regularly.

Getting your work published...

doesn't get easier once you've done it, suprisingly

Does posting on ILX take away from your *real* writing?

at times yes but other times i use ilx as a writing lab and also for "inspiration" hahaha no seriously

# Where do you write at?
- Sitting here at my PC at home with a view of the street outside. Or else at work, when nobody's looking, at my work PC.

# Do you keep a journal?
- No.

# Getting your work published...
- Have had various short stories published in various magazines in the past, almost all of which folded immediately after in a The Information-style fashion. Had a novel come very close on several occasions, always falling through at the end.

# Does posting on ILX take away from your *real* writing?
- Almost everything I do takes me away from my 'real' writing--I'm a hopeless procrastinator.

really enjoying the i love writing board over here. kudos!

# Where do you write at?
At home, at work, out in the park, very occassionally at a coffee shop
# Do you keep a journal?
Not so much.
# Getting your work published...
Journalism-type stuff gets published lots. Working on "other" stuff that I would like to get published. Or rather, like to get paid for.
# Does posting on ILX take away from your *real* writing?
Used to. Not anymore.

# Where do you write at?
- At my PC in the dark in the wee hours, or on my laptop at a coffee shop down the street from about 7 til closing time. Poems and drafts thereof go in the composition book I share with my gf & scribblings that eventually become other things go in the Moleskine.

# Do you keep a journal?
- The comp book I share with my gf is used as a journal between bursts of inspiration.

# Getting your work published...
-I've had a handful of poems published in minor journals and one of my stories was published in a ~webzine~. I finally bought myself the newest Writer's Market and I'm combing it for new ideas. It's nice to have an index on paper instead of having to search duotrope as though I already know what I'm trying to find.

# Does posting on ILX take away from your *real* writing?
- ILX got me away from music writing (the initial "hey this place will help me find new music to write about!" turned into "i post here all the time and never write about music"), but other than that it doesn't get in the way much at all. Other than giving me something else to do on the computer that isn't writing.

# Where do you write at?
MacBook; various locations. At home in Seattle, the dining room table. In NYC, where I've been for six weeks, either kitchen table, living room couch, or various Starbuckses.

# Do you keep a journal?
No, unless my blogging counts.

# Getting your work published . . .
. . . guarantees nothing.

# Does posting on ILX take away from your *real* writing?
Only when I let it.

# Where do you write at?
work

# Do you keep a journal?
no

# Getting your work published...
just wheat paste it to cars

# Does posting on ILX take away from your *real* writing?
hell na

# Where do you write at?
The computer, sat here; my desk at work, sometimes; the anonymous business park coffee shop where I work, sometimes; train journeys, when I can make myself; at least one nearby pub is showing promise.

# Do you keep a journal?
I have more than one, at this point; plus a tumblr.

# Getting your work published . . .
I have no idea how I'd even go about this.

# Does posting on ILX take away from your *real* writing?
I think when I'm posting most on here and on tumblr is also when I'm also most motivated and most able to go and put some actual time into writing prose.

I'd kind of like a private 'I Love Writing' board where people could, you know, share shit, do feedback; I don't know if anyone else would like or want or need that, though.

I would! For a start it'd be great for my motivation to get things done. Also I'd like to read the fruits of ILX's literary loins. Also I'm a show-off who wants constructive validation ;)

that is in large part my motivation, also

i don't know if there's anyone else around in a similar position though? HOOS having left

"if we start it, they will come"

how do we do this, then

i've never started a board

start a thread on the MRF linking to our posts here, and suggesting that others will join in should it take off

making it private could be a step too far, but it could certainly be a deindexed board

What kind of writing is this board going to be about?

Is it going to focus on a particular kind of writing? (fiction, journalism, etc?)

Is it going to exclude any kinds of writing? (for example, people who don't entirely write with original characters?)

I like the idea of an "I Love Writing" board, I just wonder if it's going to have a particular slant.

it would be entirely open-ended, unless thomp decided otherwise - I suspect he's more than happy for any sort of writing to be proffered

Good idea. I'd join. Maybe keep it private to take account of anti-plagiarism (ha!) and shyness, but keep a parent thread here so new 'uns can find a way in.

I disagree with the idea of making it a "closed" board. Mostly because there are quite a few people I would invite to such a board (people I know of through writerly circles, who would not necessarily interested in the rest of ILX) - and it'd just be annoyingly hard to convince people to join a community they can't look at first and lurk on before posting.

yeah, but i'm uneasy about posting stuff for feedback publicly for the reasons ismael gives (latter more than former) — there are ways around this (sharing via email or facebook, say) but then the administration of who's in becomes even more complicated. i wasn't aware of the option to have it de-indexed, that might make for a good compromise.

also yeah this:

it would be entirely open-ended, unless thomp decided otherwise - I suspect he's more than happy for any sort of writing to be proffered

shyness kinda obliterates the point of ILW :P

I don't know - I certainly wouldn't share anything unless it was a fully private board. But I still like the idea of a board to talk about the trials and tribulations of writing/attempting to write. It definitely needs to be about any kind of writing, though, from free verse to critical analysis to fan fiction.

Hi there!
Perhaps there could be a way to serve both needs? A discussion board for the trials and tribs (and rare treasures) of writing that also acts as a connect for people to, I dunno, webmail writing for feedback?

You guys are probably gonna have to take this to Facebook or Livejournal as the request for the reinstating of this board has just turned into another thread where people bitch about soccerball and chat inanely to each other while thinking that they have the whole board's attention.

A pity.

number of posts containing mention of football since your last post, 26 hours ago:

zero.

I'm sure that thomp and others appreciate your dismissal of their on-topic discussion since then as 'inane chatter' tho.

darragh, i believe k8 is referring to the thread i started on MRF:

board creation request

my mistake, apologies.

should probably complain about it on that thread, then? but really, the mods that will make the decision one way or the other aren't going to be swayed by people posting gifs of marie antoinette.

I've pretty much changed my mind about wanting to be involved with this, actually. Good luck, Thomp.

(That "good luck" not sarcastic BTW, hope that you can sway the mods.)

why don't you just colonize an underused board?

Oh goody! I see at least one poster who I've never seen posting on ILB but who has all of sudden felt the need to police the board, which coincidentally involves having a go at Kate!!

To be fair, my reaction was exactly the same, he just beat me to it.

so wait, what happened to the board? i need it right now. let's make this happen, dudes!

I don't know. Why not give whatever-it-is its own thread here, and writer types can just colonise that nook on ILB in the meantime?

dear homosexual ii, the idea was tabled because of issues w/r/t whether the board oughta be public or not/ whether ilx was an appropriate home for it

well i think the answer to both of those is yes

Are we going to do this? ILX makeover in session

Trouble is I hate writing

but it's your talent

U don't kno me!

request for nu i hate writing

Hasn't been too long since somebody started yet another writing thread on ILB, soon submerged, like previous(one guy came back long enough to report that he and another poster had taken their discussion offsite). Nothing against starting a board, but better not to expect very much (ditto constructive/any feedback on your ilx posts overall).

A certain recently-retired ilxor offered to give me feedback on something after I gave him about 2 pages of feedback on something of his (at a delay of around 2 or 3 days). He put it off 2 weeks running then never got back to me. That was about 3 months ago. I haven't written anything since. The lesson here is not to depend on anybody for feedback

I don't even really blame him tbh, he was clearly busier than me and giving feedback can be much more daunting than receiving it. but it can't be relied upon. I need to get on with writing

I have a question

Is that deadnaming or what

The lesson here is not to depend on anybody for feedback

Ask, accept, but don't depend. There's a reason teachers are paid to do this sort of thing. It's work.

but it's your talent

maybe he doesn't thrive in the long forms. just be glad we get his pithy remarks and witty wordplay.

Too kind even at that tbh

came here to say i hate writing

The board actually already exists, 77-style. It's just that no-one's been invited to it. If enough people post here and put their hands up I'll happily invite them. Going to keep it private though I think.

why private?

Copyright theft

are there any people you'll unhappily invite

I returned to the 3.5 chapters I wrote a few months ago and found that (with a couple of minor tweaks) I really liked them, which was a nice surprise as I've been in a sort of stymied hibernation for ages, doubting whether this is anything at all. I guess I'll proceed

money where your mouth is ilx

i hate writing but i love talking about process, or like particularly listening to good writers (who a lot of people here are good writers) talking about process. but hardly anybody seems to do it :(

what happened to the I Love Writing board viz: the OG?

Should be an I Love Posting board where we really “go deep” on our posting process, offer posting tips and critique on posts in progress, then maybe all the posts wouldn’t be so bad

Should be an I Love Posting board where we really “go deep” on our posting process, offer posting tips and critique on posts in progress, then maybe all the posts wouldn’t be so bad

― subpost master (wins)

wouldn't help, i engage in extensive workshopping and self-critique of my posts and, well... :)

As someone who reads a bit and who picks up on discourse around the act of writing this feels wrong.

Writing is a way of thinking. If you delegate writing to AI, you skip the thinking as well as the writing.

— Miranda France (@MirandaFrance1) July 1, 2024

- Writing can help to flesh out the process of thinking, but it feels like this process has a few moving parts.

- Some of which can be automated by LLMs.

- Writing often reads like there is a magic to it, some of which can be picked out from a muddy swamp too.

^lmao at this trolling

Anyway, every time we get to discussing What Is Writing and Can One Still Do Literature I feel we should like, compare notes and stuff! What's going on in writing lives, when should one give up on mnstrm publishing, alternatives to such, all that

There is def room for AI to churn out stuff that can be used. And its being used.

It’s true to say that you can use AI as a part of the creative process, also true to say you can outsource part of the creative process to the gig economy; the same impetus is behind both statements imo

Yes.

Reading about early SF and how writers churned it out for a living is where I am coming from. If AI can help out then that is not nothing, but ofc you can roped in to more exploitative contracts.

Yeah obv writing itself is largely a gig economy anyway, just saying “ai” (current definition) is p much inherently exploitative, not to mention environmentally ruinous

It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure it would work for me. One of my biggest problems as a writer is that it's easier for me to write than it is for me to read. I have a very difficult time reading - anything, really, but particularly my own work. It requires a mindset, a focus, a concentration, that I barely have, these days. Or rather, when I do read, it's with an eye to writing - what my own responses to a work are and how to express those responses. Good writing is good editing, and I'm not a good editor of my own work.

AI, I think, would probably make that process harder for me in some ways. AI doesn't _think_ the way humans do. It has no real sense of purpose or meaning, just patterns and ways of organizing those patterns, one of which is deemed optimal, the others suboptimal. AI makes mistakes, but they're not _human_ mistakes. So to me, as a human, they don't make for interesting creative work. It can only imitate human flaws - it doesn't actually possess them.

In theory, one of the ways AI could help me most is in helping me to find an audience. AI is good at _rounding off_, at finding commonalities. It's not good at the individual, but at the collective. There's some value in this. I have no idea what people know and don't know, what people read and don't want to read. I have, over time, learned to make my writing shorter, more direct. To try and communicate more effectively to any potential readers. AI, I think, might be able to scan my work and look for references, and say, look, people aren't going to know what this means. It can say that reliably, backed by data. It can be more effective than human editors, I think, in this way. I think that would help me become a better writer.

I think my writing does tend to be very dense and hard to read. I say a lot, and I've learned to try and say it in the most compact form possible. My writing is often _pressured_, the way my speech, when I'm under stress, can be pressured. There are a lot of things people want to know, people feel comfortable knowing, that I don't say. I see a lot of fantasy writers, people who write based on their D&D campaigns, who spend a lot of time creating a setting, and don't get around to characters or plot. My writing is the opposite. I'm interested in characters, and from those characters plot just seems to flow naturally. This means that on the few occasions I do revise my works, they don't get shorter but _longer_. I realize all of the stuff I left out of my first draft, not things I'd _like_ to put in, but important information that I just didn't get around to telling the reader. I feel like AI could help with that.

AI writing is scary to me, though. I look at it as another new fucking skill set I have to learn to keep up as a writer. It's taken me 40 years to just learn how to write reasonably well. Then I have to worry about editing, finding an audience, keeping an audience, figuring out ways to promote and distribute my work, and now I guess I'm going to need to learn to use AI to make my work better on top of all of that? And for what? What on earth could I possibly achieve that way, what could possibly make it worth all that effort to me?

All the best to writers who attempt to share their work with others. I'm going to stick to overly-labored shitposts, thanks.

xp agreed.

Does feel like AI aided fic is true dystopian lit (like its helping it into being)

In my professional world, writing is the least time-consuming and most pleasant part. I actively want to create: to write and edit and design and produce.

I actively hate going to meetings and shepherding reviews and having a staff and making assignments and tracking statuses and managing schedules and facilitating brainstorming sessions and staying within a budget and approving people's timesheets and conducting writing training and and and.

Automate the stuff I hate to do; leave the fun bits to me, thanks.

Anyway, every time we get to discussing What Is Writing and Can One Still Do Literature I feel we should like, compare notes and stuff! What's going on in writing lives, when should one give up on mnstrm publishing, alternatives to such, all that

― imago, Sunday, 8 September 2024 13:31 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

let's try this again shall we