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Friday Fun Thread for April 7, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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tl;dr: How to find a writing group?

I've recently repicked up writing*. This time around I'm trying a more structured approach and doing more research on the art of writing. The one piece of advice that seems the most useful is about the utility of being part of a writing group. It seems to be an obviously useful strategy in terms of: feedback , idea brainstorming, motivation, & networking. I'm convinced I should join one, but where should I begin?

A local group would be nice to allow for face to face gatherings. Alternatively, maybe optimizing for genre over geography would be wise. But that's putting the cart before the horse - I have no idea on where to begin. I also wouldn't be opposed to starting my own group and putting in the effort there if I thought there was demand for it (here or elsewhere).

For those of you have joined a writing group (or deliberately chosen not to), how did you find your group? Was it the advertised panacea?

*Trying to thread the needle between progression and epic fantasy. I am willing to admit I enjoy the inherently pulpy progression fantasy, but just about every series is embarrassingly bad. And it really doesn't have to be. If there was ever a time to do it is now; I suspect there are only a few years left before the LLMs advance enough that they can write a high quality novel tailor made to every taste.

There’s always /r/rational (which has devolved into mostly progression fantasy due to the popularity). It was the second place I joined on Reddit after /r/HPMOR.

I've gotta say I was not expecting that content from a sub named "rational."

Most posts seem to be everyone shilling their own fanfic quality writings. I'm sure there's some good stuff there, but I'm not sure how much of the "devolved" content I'd be willing to wade through.

2016 really wrecked that place, and 2020 finished the job.