It Begins
And I hope many lovely writers will join me
Hello, writer!
My name is Karl Drinkwater. I’m an author, creative writing teacher, editor, and writing mentor. It’s really rewarding. I particularly love the engagement, and inspiring other writers. I also wrote From Idea To Item, to help authors understand the publishing processes.
I want to try and capture a bit of that community spirit online, to expand on my face-to-face creative writing classes with a more focussed online group and newsletter based around craft and critique.
This group is a way to share more of my experience from the above, and also to encourage love of words as I do in my face-to-face teaching. It doesn’t matter if you write microfiction, short stories, poetry, novels, or non-fiction: good writing is a combination of word-love (so that we choose the best ones!), developing a control of style, and instilling it all with your own voice.
And so this has been born. A newsletter/group specifically aimed at writers, with the focus on enjoying the process of writing, whilst also working on the craft and techniques that make our writing better.
What To Expect
This is currently new, but I’m working on the idea of multiple types of post, as below. Maybe a couple a week out of this selection. The menu at the top of this site (or the links below) will act as an easy shortcut to each type of post. Each targets a different area, but they add up to cover many of the stages in writing and publishing.
WRITE!
Mostly writing prompts, to encourage you to create new pieces. Some prompts may be short, like a photo, or a first line. Others might be more substantive, such as WRITE sessions I have delivered, rewritten to be things you can read and work on solo. I’d plan to eventually put some of those together in book form, for those who prefer that. So this idea is about keeping people writing, imaginations going, and also generating new poems and stories.
Craft
New posts on elements of craft such as plotting, style, characters and so on.
Critique
Learning from shared critique. Subscribers could send me a sample of their work, or a blurb, or a poem: something short. I wouldn’t do a full edit, just pull out a few general points which we could all learn from. This could be good for the works generated from writing prompts, to get them more polished. You would have four options for accreditation: completely anonymous; single name or initials (“Jane”or “KD”); your full name; or your full name plus optional link to your website or author social media. I could also share some editing work I’d done in the past with my comments, but the original text completely changed and anonymised.
Celebrate
A chance to celebrate words, achievements, and the works subscribers create! So one strand is a feature spot where I share work submitted by subscribers. So those works they’ve written, and edited, and polished, and got into a good state could be showcased to the other authors on the course, so we could all celebrate each other’s achievements and words. I love encouraging other writers. Maybe I’d sometimes share works that I think might inspire or amuse; or fiction by guest authors. There could also be positive recommendations and reviews (of fiction or non-fiction) sent to me by the subscribers if they were interested in doing so. I’d compile them and share them when there were a few.
Q&A
There are a few ways this could work. Subcribers could send short writing (or publishing) questions to me. I’d pick some and post them with a short answer or some tips. But the Q&A thread could also include interviews. An option for subscribers to be featured in a brief Q&A. What they are working on? What would they like to achieve? Favourite books? That kind of thing. The aim is to share experiences, show how much we all have in common, and also help foster the community angle as we get to know each other. Perhaps I’d also do occasional interviews with some of my published author friends.
Publish
Various pieces related to this, logically continuing the process of writing and crafting: what to do with finished works? It could include subscribers’ experiences of publishing. Also opportunities (such as funding for writers). Sometimes I could repeat older posts from my other blog publishing when we have a lot of new members. But publishing advice isn’t the main point of the group, just an occasional sideline. The focus is on writing, and improving our craft.
Promote
As above, but related to promotion. As in, the things that happen to promote a work that has already been published. Again, not the aim of the group, but something that will no doubt get touched on in passing.
So the post types cover the main processes and elements of writing. WRITE (get new words down); work on CRAFT as we do so; learn more via Q&As; edit the work, with the help of CRITIQUE; then CELEBRATE finished works, or exemplary words by others. At that point we might be thinking about issues relating to PUBLISHING & PROMOTION.
I’d really want to encourage a community feel, so that people see the other subscribers as friends, and feel confident in commenting, chatting, and mutually encouraging. Still, it would be optional whether a subscriber just read and learnt from posts, with maybe occasional direct emails to me; or engaged with the other writers with comments or chat. There would be no pressure either way, subscribers could engage with the content however suited them.
Subscribers would just ignore any posts that didn’t interest them.
Cost
This is a paid newsletter/group, for a few reasons.
Firstly, it compensates me for my time (and experience), which frees me up to devote myself to this a bit more.
Secondly, by paywalling it, the content isn’t available for all to see, so it can’t be scraped by AI bots or copied by strangers or spied on by random Internet weirdos. It makes the group private. I find people are more likely to engage and discuss writing when they know who is listening. We’d be a community.
Obviously people could cancel their subscription at any time, and maybe come back to it later.
I’ve set up a standard price, of either £5 a month or £50 for a whole year (two months free). And there is a 50%-off reduced price for people with less money, so they aren’t excluded. I just leave it up to people and their conscience to choose whichever option is appropriate to them. Click here for the 50%-off version.
Or use this button for the standard price:
This is your chance to get right in at the start!
Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives. If you subscribe then every post goes directly to your inbox. You can reply to the emails to get in touch with me, or comment publicly on the posts and join the discussion.
I hope you will take part!
Tip: it is cheaper to subscribe through a normal web browser than through the Substack app: for the latter Google or Apple add their own fee (which they keep!) so things bought through the app cost you more. Avoid that unnecessary charge!
