Hot Off the Typewriter: Writing is not a single-player game
Why community matters so much to writers and what we want to build towards in EmberWrite's community from Micah, co-founder and community lead
The Magic of Writing Communities
I’ve been writing fiction for almost as long as I could hold a pen. (My first story in elementary school was Cat City, about the cat-topia our indoor/outdoor cat disappeared to when she went outside).
But I must have missed the memo about writing being a solitary activity. I started off co-writing fanfiction and original stories with friends in 5th grade. I kept writing even when my friends lost interest, but it just wasn’t as fun.
The first time I saw the real magic of community was on the internet: RP communities, fanfiction sites, Quizilla. I was way too nervous to post stories myself, but I reviewed and lurked.
After college, I found a critique group by mere chance at a local writer’s guild meeting. These 50-60+ YO “writing aunts” taught me more about writing in months than I learned in years.
I also joined a social media platform with a big community of writers on it.
That magic from middle-school was suddenly back. People were sharing excerpts of their writing, others were cheering them on. Writing games and prompts got passed around like wildfire.
But I noticed people complaining about not being able to find other writers on the site. I thought: “Well what if we had a directory somewhere?”
That idea evolved into a community of 400 “members” with profiles in the directory and 5000 followers. People were trading advice, following each other, even becoming beta-readers for each other.
I ran the community as solo-admin for the next three years.
Afterwards, I found other critique partners through different online circles. Their feedback was like rocket fuel for getting better at writing.
But I always found them by chance. And this realization hit me:
“You got lucky to find these people. Other writers may not be so lucky. That’s not fair. It’s not right!”
Especially in today’s world where a writer is expected to have “a platform” before they can even think of getting an agent or has to recruit 100 people to a launch team just to keep a self-published book from disappearing into the Amazon abyss after a day.
The thought ate away at me. It seemed like most writing communities did a great job on the education side. But I wanted writers to connect with each other.
Sure there were critique groups, but those were so formal. I hadn’t gotten to really know my writing aunts until almost a year of going to weekly critique groups.
And then one day, Paul mentioned the idea of a writing app to me.
Somewhere along the line, we started talking about community. I inevitably ended up on my soapbox about how hard it was to find other writers and how I wished it was easier for everyone to find writing friends they clicked with.
To which he replied:
You know we could do that, right?
At which point I had to sit down on my soapbox, prop my chin in my hand and go: yeah, we could, couldn’t we?
And that’s where EmberWrite’s community started.
Yes, we’re building an app. Right now, it’s just a writing app. But we are building it every step of the way by listening to writers and incorporating their feedback. Take this exchange between one of our alpha testers and Paul:
Outside of the app, we’re building a community that:
Welcomes the newbie writer into the realm of writing and helps them learn faster
Connects writers so they have someone to scream (sometimes in joy, sometimes in frustration) about their writing to, instead of being stuck facing the ups and downs alone
Helps the self-published author or the yet-to-be-agented-hopeful start getting traction on platform building so they’re not starting from scratch
It’s a big goal. But it’s where we want to go. And we firmly believe we can take it there with enough help.
If you want to join in on the journey, all you have to do is join our Discord server by filling out this quick form:
Hope to see you there!