Writing.com

[aggienaut]

   So, continuing my search for a good creative writing website. After more than 48 hours there's still hardly any evidence of any activity on webooks. I even posted a "is anyone alive here??" post in the general forum and no response.

   So next I googled "writing" and wandered over to "writing.com." My first impressions were that it looked shockingly amateurish, and was full of advertisements and plugs to pay more for more "membership options" ... for example without paying, one can only host 10 pieces of writing on there.
   On further inspection... I found navigation to be a nightmarish byzantine labyrinth swamp. The mods all have sparkling gif images of lions and other retch-causing cheesiness abounds ... but despite that there's some writing on there that isn't altogether terrible.
   After 24 hours of poking around there, I've reviewed 18 pieces of writing (several of which were almost decent!), received 3 reviews of my own stories (one of which was more than a line!), accumulated 16,348 "GP" (gold pieces? guest points? gratuitous pork?) and, incomprehensibly, been gifted three months of "upgraded paid membership."

   In conclusion, writing.com is a strange swamp, demoralizing in its impossible-to-navigate amateur-looking framework, but seemingly full of life at least.


   There appear to be a number of writing contests going on over there, which is kind of what I'd been looking for. Since anyone over there can create one, there's a number of them. Unfortunately, most of them have really specific prompts ("write about a storm from the storm's point of view," "write about an angsty 16 year old girl who feels neglected, from the perspective of her gluton-intolerant calico cat, beginning with the words 'Justin Bieber'" ...), specifying not just a topic but a perspective and frequently several other elements which must be included. Much as I hate to warm what passes for a heart in that fellow Gary, Lord High Administrator and Pontifcal-Hat-Wearer of LJ Idol, it makes me appreciate that he always provides merely a word or phrase.
   I found a once-every-24-hours writing contest, and as I've got nothing but time on my hands for now (one week till I'm shipped off to Botany Bay Brisbane!), I thought this would be a fun daily distraction. Yesterday's topic was "about finding something lost many years earlier." Well I was tired of reading crappy cliche fantasy fiction, and had swamps on the mind due to inherent analogies to the digital setting, so I decided to write a parado fantasy story about an exiled king... who has spent the last ten years living deep in a swamp running a mediocre slug farm and making mediocre fungus whiskey.
   Within moments of posting it, I was notified that its rating was changed from "general audiences" to "13+," due to references to fungus whiskey. The thought that I'd start some poor young child down the path of fungus based spirits rather amused me. Anyway, my story didn't end up winning, the one judge instead selected some shmaltzy story about some guy losing his mind, or his family (I don't know, I lost interest three paragraphs in), that clearly is missing a comma only eight words in.
   Today's topic is the above referenced "storm, from the storm's perspective," which I'm going to go ahead and choose not to address.

   In conclusion, livejournal might still be the best place on the internet. And here's a picture of me falling out of an airplane:

Comments

[blythe025.livejournal.com]

If you're looking for places to post fiction or creative nonfiction, another option is wattpad.com. I decided to try it out because Margaret Atwood joined and posted some of her poetry, as well as Paulo Coelho. There's a lot of amateur writing there, too, but also some great stuff. The design isn't perfect, but pretty clean and it has an associated app for people to read the stories on their phones. Not as many contests though.

Love the skydiving pic. :)

[xo-kizzy-xo.livejournal.com]

I've heard a few good things about Scribophile. I don't belong to it, but it seems to me to be a bit more "serious" than most of the other sites out there.

[yachiru]

^ Seconding that. It's very point based though and heavy on the participation. But I've enjoyed it so far.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Fungus whiskey?

Do tell...

[lawchicky.livejournal.com]

I heartily agree with everything you've addressed here and love your photograph.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming its not a possible real life thing. Fungii don't contain any starches or sugars right?

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Also they just lost some more points with me because my intro post has been "suspended" and censored ... I'm not entirely sure why but I suspect its because I committed the blasphemy of mentioning another site (webooks).

Figment?

[estelle.livejournal.com]

I haven't checked into my writing.com account in years.

How about http://figment.com/ ?
I am only a newbie there myself, though.

I'll try scribophile, too.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

Not to the best of my knowledge, which doesn't mean one could not infuse whiskey with some kind of mushroom—cheap stuff, by the way, as you would not want to use Glenmorangie (trust me on this).

Off the cuff, this probably wouldn't even work with the cheap stuff, either, as the whiskey flavor would likely overpower anything you might care to add (as opposed to, say, vodka, the flavoring of which had become a marketing phenomenon in itself).

Unless it was a really foul-smelling mushroom, like a stinkhorn! Yeah, that's the ticket! (Not!)

Cheers...

[pavel-lishin.livejournal.com]

I don't know about fungus whiskey, but there is such a thing as a whiskey fungus.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha. Well, clearly, when my fantasy story about the slug farmer is made into a feature film (starring Orlando Bloom as King Ibtriblatt, and Scarlette Johansson as the love interest), we'll have to come out with some fungal spirits as a marketing tie-in. You're right though, it might only work with vodka.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

O RLY. Does it.... taste like whiskey? O_o

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out! (:

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

It doesn't have a wiki page but googling it comes up with lots of links about lawsuits regarding it! I'm going to assume it's a fungus that when injested makes one manically litigious!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendation! I've checked it out and I think it's the best so far!

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

So I checked it out yesterday, and I think I rather agree that it's pretty good! Website is clean and professional looking and easy to navigate, people are active and friendly (I had a whole bunch of responses to my hello post within the hour), and I've already received the most thorough critique I've gotten anywhere on the internet. Love their line-by-line critique interface!

What's your name on scribophile?

[yachiru]

Glad you like it! I'm on as Jasmine Tea.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh another site! And here I thought I was done reviewing sites ;D What's this wattpad like?

[blythe025.livejournal.com]

Writers post stories (either short stories or novels in serialized format or snippets or poetry), which readers can vote or comment on, and they can "fan" their favorite authors to find out when something new is posted. The stories appear, more or less, in an e-book style format. I like the style of it, and highlighting (for copy-paste purposes) is disabled for posted stories, which I think is a copyright protection feature.

According to the website, it has millions of readers every month. It also has an associated phone app and the option to promote your story on other sites (such as GoogleBooks, Sony eBookstore, and Scribd). All of which, suggests that there is an opportunity to connect with readers. You still have to find ways to promote your work on the site by chatting with readers and commenting on other works, and so forth, which is a lot of work in itself.

There is also a separate set of forums for discussions about the books on the site or writing in general.

There are definitely a lot of young, new writers on the site, but there are also some rather professional ones, as well so wattpad.com is worth a look at. :)