The Year Round Writing Group: The Journey
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Copyright © 2013 National Novel Writing Month :: All posted novel excerpts remain copyright to their authors.
*** UPDATE *** (2013-12-03)
All new AND existing members should fill out and submit this questionnaire form. Note that the first meeting is Saturday, January 11th, 11:30 AM-3 PM in the Naperville Municipal Center Lunch Room (just to the right if you are entering from the underground parking garage).
ORIGINAL POST
As we head into the final week of the 2013 National Novel Writing Month, it's perhaps appropriate to begin thinking "What next?"
One possibility to help you achieve your writing goals is to join the Journey. This is our year-round, cafeteria-style writing group. It's year-round but mostly focuses on January-June and September (since after September people focus on NaNoWriMo; and July and August are too filled with vacation plans). It's cafeteria-style in the sense that members get to pick and choose what they want to participate in and what activities they want to organize.
It's a great group of people who share (to varying degrees) a diverse set of interests generally centered around writing.
In 2013, Journey Paths included:
Did I mention that it's free? There is no membership fee; people pay their own way for restaurants, conventions, writers retreats, etc.
LIST UPDATED 2013-12-11 6:47 AM
If you're an existing member and would like to stay in, reply below and mention some of your favorite Paths you've enjoyed. If you'd like to join as a new member, note what it is you believe you're looking for from a writing group. * = has responded to the survey.
Existing members
New members
I would like to stay involved, please!
I enjoy the monthly meetings and the writer's voice workshop. My favorite things in the last year were probably the social ones: seeing Much Ado and Next to Normal. I've heard a lot of good ideas for next year's anthologies and I'm excited to see what comes of them. I'd also like to see if we can get a small group to follow through on Todd's idea of meeting every so often to keep each other on task with our writing (he can probably word this better than I).
I loved Much Ado About Nothing (which prompted the Shakespeare Reader's Theatre) and the Next to Normal outings too.
I think that Todd called the small group an accountability group or something like that. It sounds like a good idea.
Thanks, Jez. Also I should note for others: Jez is the master Editor of our new writing community blog that we will work on for 2014.
The four anthologies we have on tap thus far for 2014:
I'm looking forward to joining! I'm very interested in the accountability group and social outings. I don't usually do short stories, but I may have to try my hand at it...
I would like to stick around, even though I had very little time to participate last year. I enjoyed the writer's retreat we had two years ago, and the social events like dinners. I also thought the writer's workshop was very productive.
I'd like to stay involved! I loved our social outings, the Shakespeare path, and the writer's voice workshop. I also look forward to staying in touch with some folks to finish and edit our NaNo stories this year. Also can't wait to be more involved with the blog!
I enjoy the monthly Journey meetings, and several of the paths this year, including the Shakespeare reading path, the Art Institute and viewing Much Ado About Nothing. The group might benefit from an Accountability Group, an idea borrowed from people seeking employment. The difference is that the focus would be on a writer's personal commitment to a short-term goal or two, and reporting any progress made. Other writers lend their support and perhaps challenge the writer to take bigger chances.Perhaps we could meet monthly on a weekend that is not a Journey weekend. How many in a group? I don't know. But it might be easy to divide up into a couple groups if more than 8 people show up. We can play by ear, and adapt as necessary. If anyone has ideas to tweak or improve, great! The Accountability group could also encourage participation in the Anthologies.
I'm in again. I enjoyed many of the activities, especially the presentations/workshops during the Saturday meetings, archery, and the Shakespeare path. Todd's accountability group sounds like a good idea, and I'm hoping we can also do more to figure out what a collaborative web presence might look like. Seems like we have a pretty good start on that last one, but would like to see more.
I really liked the Next to Normal musical theater outing (must have since I went back and saw the show 3 more times on my own), and Cassidy's Spirit Path was fun.
I'mnot interested in anthologies, so when that becomes the focus, I'llbe elsewhere.
If there's interest, I'm happy to lead something on editing, but I'm not sure what people would find useful. Although I now use a Kindle near the end of editing (around pass 4 or 5), I still pretty much follow my process as detailed at: http://www.katherinelato.com/journey/edit-advice.pdf
If you can think of what might be useful for an editing path, please let me know.
I downloaded your PDF and will look through it more closely later (I'm at school now), but I thank you for the link!
I'd definitely be interested in something with editing (starting after January), but I'll have to think on what kind of path to suggest for that. I'd like to hear different approaches and tips/tricks for editing. This could easily be just a single lecture (as part of the monthly meetings?) but that doesn't really create a path or help us throughout the editing process.
I suspect that Todd's suggested Accountability Group (perhaps with a focus on editing) would be one way to structure an Editing Path, combined with a couple Editing workshops.
I'm still in it. I'll try to go to more Journey meetings next year. I had a real bad habit about missing them for one reason or another this year.
I like the short story anthology track even though I dropped the ball on that last year too. Next year I'm taking the revision/editing track more seriously, as I'm starting to get into the habit of it now and I still have several manuscripts left to work on.
Spirit path was a great addition last year as well, and I'd do the reader's theatre again.
I don't think I'd do so well in the accountability track, though. Most likely my creative spirit would rebel against all the creative deadlines I'd try to make, just like it has most of mylife.
I hope to continue game nights of course. But I also enjoy the spirit path and the reader's theatre! I also could use the accountablility track I'm afraid. But I am not sure how well that will work for me.
I'd love to stay involved with the Journey even though this NaNo I haven't been able to participate in much. I've really enjoyed the monthly meetings particularly the presentations individual members have given. The Shakespeare read-alouds were really terrific. An editing path would greatly appeal to me. Board game and role-playing game nights would interest me as well especially cooperative games or ones that involve creating characters/telling a bit of the game's story.
- April
I'm still in. I love writing for the anthologies, and look forward to our monthly meetings. With young kids its tough to do the outings, but I am hoping to get involved in a couple next year.
I would like to stay involved. I would also like to keep the Spirit Path going, of course. =) And I loved the Shakespeare path.
For the next year, I have a couple of ideas for the horror anthology. So I'll probably end up signing up for that too.
I'm still in!
The Shakespeare path was a blast. I'd also love to do board games or roleplaying games. There's a posibility we could also host a smaller group at our apartment this upcoming year.
I'm always a bit light on the actual writing activities with the group since once December hits my mind starts shifting over to art and preparing pieces for my convention sales in May, but we'll see on that front!
I'm definitely still in. I had a lot of fun with the social paths last year - archery for sure, and the Shakespeare readings were always great fun - and I love Todd's idea of an accountability group. Count me as another one who'd be interested in an editing path: maybe combined with the accountability group, plus some workshop meetings where we could talk about strategies/techniques/complain about how many scenes we had to rewrite?
I'm in this year for the recipe anthology. Will there be someone to read my story to make sure it is okay? My cousin will help me with the technical editing. Carol
I believe India will set the rules for how the critiquing is to be done. In the past we've either done round-robin critiques within the group of authors or used critiquecircle or both.
Cheers!
--Tim
I've been part of the Journey in the past and would like to re-enlist. I've enjoyed some writing and editing work, and would love to be a part of more.
--B. A. Binns
*****Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men****
This was my first year of participating in NaNoWriMo (and I'm happy to say I'm already a winner!).I found it an extremely positive experience. I would be interested in participatingin whatever you have upcoming for the year. Thanks to the ML's for all the work and motivation that you provide.
Would I be able to join? It sounds like a blast!
I'm joining again and plan to participate more this year. I'm off the disabled list, so I don't have any excuse for not making meetings.
I'm interested but nervous about committing to anything long-term. I think what would benefit me the most would be the previously mentioned Accountability Path, or at leastsomeone(s) to help me stay focused and finish what I start.
I would be interesting in continuing year-round. This group has been a blast.
I'm interested in joining. Last year after NaNo was over I completely slacked off and I do not want to do that again. I need to be held accountable. It might be tough for me to make all of the meetings but I will be there when I can.
I'm interested too. I'm not sure how many gatherings Iwill be able tomake. Associatingwith like minded individualswill helpme stay on the writing path year round. Something that in the past just dissipated after November.
I would like to join.
I would definitelybe interested in the workshops, and the Readers Theatre. The accountability path is a really good idea as well - I like the idea of being held accountable on my writing journey.
Brian
All new AND existing members should fill out and submit this questionnaire form. Note that the first meeting is Saturday, January 11th, 11:30 AM-3 PM in the Naperville Municipal Center Lunch Room (just to the right if you are entering from the underground parking garage).
All Journey meetings will be added to our events page.
Thanks,
--Tim
I'm heeeeeereeee! Back again.
I love the Journey. The Journey is my friend. I've done an anthology path before which was fun and stuff. (Though you know, stressful as all get out.) But the spirit paths and some of the journey workshops are amazing. Specifically the writer's voice. I've had buckets of fun there.
Also look at that. First meeting is my birthday.The journey is definitely a 'at your own pace' type of group. Even if you hopped on board, you're not obligated to come to anything. I know last year I was really active in the group but the year before? I made it to maybe one thing. There's no pressure to show up to everything, even if you're a part of the group. (: Pick and choose what suits you best.
Katherine,
Count me in if you will be leading an editing workshop. At the TGIO party you mentioned a way of editing that I'm not sure I completely understood. It was about re-writing the first paragraph of each chapter and also about working on 10 pages. Could you explain that in more detail. I'm sure if would be useful not only to me, but anyone else starting to edit their novels. (before editing workshops gets started)
Thanks again for your great workshop in October. I found it and all of the other workshops very valuable! (thanks to Todd, Roger, Frank and Tim!)
Now that I've found this new interest in writing, I'm looking forward to continuing it year round, so I'm excited about the Journey!
Elaine (fishmama)
Info about the 10 pages at a timecan be found at:
http://www.katherinelato.com/journey/edit-advice.pdf
http://katherinelato.com/cc/how.htm
If I write more guides, I'll include them at the bottom of my web page at:http://katherinelato.com/
I should write about how I use my Kindle in my editing process these days, and something about the beginning of chapters. (One of these days, I will.)
I would like to join! I was also wondering if there was any sort of Path for poetry? I only write poetry casually and would really like to have some workshops where we could read,critique, and enjoy poetry.
We had a very informal Poetry Path this year; several people shared poems within the Journey google group.
I, for one, would be interested in a Poetry Path workshop...
Just a quick reminder that the first meeting of the Journey in 2014 is today, 2014-01-11 (Saturday), 11:30 AM-3 PM at the lunch room in the lower level of the Naperville Municipal Center, 400 S. Eagle Street. Bring your lunch (and maybe also your laptop--we will be going over how our websites work).
Author Catherine Brennan leads a workshop on Orson Scott Card's MICE Quotient at Saturday's Journey meeting (2014-03-08). All are welcome; bring your own lunch. 11:30 am-3 pm at the Lunch room in the lower level of the Naperville Municipal Center, 400 S. Eagle Street, Naperville.