Getting Back in the Game with Scribophile

Did you think I was gone for good? Never. Some exciting things have been going on in my life since the last time I posted on this site:

• I moved to a new state (Oregon)
• Started a new job
• Got married
• Won my first writing contest
• Got a puppy
• Got paid for my writing for the first time
• Moved back to Washington
• Started another new job
• Stayed married
• Got accepted to a journal for publication for the first time

And now, here I am again! I’m hoping to revamp this site, change things around a bit. Starting now, every Wednesday I’ll be posting about my writing process. These will be my personal thoughts on the act of creating the written word, my struggles, my successes, tips and tricks that have worked for me and hopefully others can use. I’m hoping this kind of disciplined writing schedule will help keep me on track in my other projects as well as give y’all a little insight into what it’s like to write the kind of stuff I do while being me.

A big part of my new writing process has been joining this site called Scribophile. For those of you who don’t know, Scribophile is an online, members-only critique site. I like to think of it as a virtual writers circle. When I was an undergrad at UW, I had a weekly writers circle that I was a member of that helped my writing immensely. After I graduated, I stayed in touch with a lot of those people during my grad school time and continued to workshop pieces with them. But then the big move out of state happened and I lost my writing support structure. For awhile I thought I was fine. I knew enough about writing at this point, right? I could edit my own stuff.

WRONG.

I felt lost. I still had friends and family who would read and give me feedback on my work, but it wasn’t the same. I missed reading others work, missed the chance to learn from others’ successes as much as their mistakes. I missed the sense of community, of working towards a common goal. My own writing floundered and stalled. I felt stuck, like I had gone as far as I could go.

And then I found Scribophile.

I’ve only been a member for a few weeks now, but in those few weeks I’ve workshopped three pieces and had one of them accepted for publication. The community I’ve found there has been supportive, fun, and just my speed. You can get as involved as you like (which for an introvert like me is key) and the way the system of critique is set up, you are guaranteed to get feedback. So far I’ve yet to have a bad experience on the site.

I promise that Scribophile isn’t paying me to say all this stuff either. Just a really big fan of it right now. Seriously, if you’re feeling stuck and alone in your writing world like I was I’d highly recommend giving Scribophile a shot. In fact, I’m going to go right now and do some more critiques. It’s kind of addictive.