I went in expecting my takeaways to be limited to the scope of how learn from other writers, but I ended up getting a lot more. From domains spanning from writing itself all the way to what makes good software good.

If you're lucky enough to have smart people around you then they usually know what's good for you. And if you're lucky enough to have a hard head then you'll blissfully pounce around thinking you don't need to listen to them.

My girlfriend has been advising me for years to deliberately mimic an established writer or two that I admire just to improve my chops and develop an awareness of what makes a piece good/bad/etc, I resisted the idea even though the whole time she was trying to caveat the point that I didn't need to write like other people for the rest of my life. It was just an exercise! But still I had a thick skull and said No! I'm unique!

When Daniel shared the club, I went and read the class' copy and knew immediately that it was time to finally listen that good advice: all it took was some great copywriting by

Maggie Appleton

and the

dopamine

morsels associated with the idea of writing fiction alongside Daniel again. I guess now that I'm writing this I see that my main attraction had been the prospect of having a place to write fiction with others. I expected most of the cohort to write non-fiction, but even if it turned out to just be me and Daniel that would've been good enough, although the first thing I did after signing up was sending a link to the class to

GabrielGreco

trying to get him onboard.

After sending that email I suddenly thought this would make a perfect six week exercise for Keni. I felt like the deliberate, constrained nature of the club would lead to some good results. In the past few years of us writing together I've observed that Keni has done the best when there were clear, tight constraints. I hypothesize that this is why she loves contests although she does claim that it's for the competitive aspect, but while writing this I can't help but wonder if the narrow scope that comes with competitions has something to do with it.

Wow this is getting too long for one post. I guess I'll have to write more of it in future ones.


Thanks to

dealingwith

for sharing the

Echo and Narcissus

writing club and to

keni

for taking a chance and joining.