Welcome to the 26th writing club update!

I hope everyone has been having a pleasant late summer. The weather here has been a mix of rain and sunshine back and forth, in an almost 50/50 mix that I don't recall seeing for years. It's been great for the vegetables, anyway.

To quote from previous entries:

To anyone stumbling upon this post and wondering about the rules -- there really aren't any! This is a club for mostly the same regulars and semi-regulars, but visitors are encouraged to comment on writing, or writing adjacent, updates or share their own. The idea is to set a goal for yourself and try to achieve it by the next month's update. :)

Anyone heard? I have no idea what's going on.

Latest issue I've seen any evidence is the one picture here from 2025. I understand they've had a bumpy ride (some controversy around politics of a featured writer, unpaid writers, and intermittent delivery schedule). And now of course they've been purchased by the same unicorn as Analog and Asimov's I believe (you can tell by the change to pulpy construction, heh).

But have they even paid everyone they owe? Is anyone submitting stories??

I don't think anyone can expect them fulfill their description as a quarterly magazine, but is there any evidence that we'll get even 1 issue in 2026?

ADHDers might call this a "hyperfocus" or the kind of obsession which resembles a hobby. Some activity that you think about at work all day and have to tear yourself away from to do anything else. I know it sounds like addiction, and it can look like one, but it always passes. Creative people might call it a muse?

I'm just on the tail end of one (Doom mapping), but no longer to the point I'll skip eating in order to do it. So will probably be moving on soon.

Does this sound familiar? What are your obsessions like for you? Do you get them? Have you ever had one?

Welcome to the 23nd writing club update! The number twenty-three is one of those numbers that contains a clearly incrementing sequence, so always satisfying to type on a keyboard--you can kind of roll your fingers over the number keys: 23 23 123 1234 (that kind of thing).

Speaking of satisfying to type, I hope everyone has had at least two or three great writing experiences this month!

On to weather, Spring is really happening here finally, after a bit of an extended chilly period. So that's always fun.

To anyone stumbling upon this post and wondering about the rules -- there really aren't any! This is a club for mostly the same regulars and semi-regulars, but visitors are encouraged to comment on writing updates or share their own. The main idea is to set a goal for yourself and try to achieve it by the next month's update. :)

Welcome to the 22nd writing club update. Spoken aloud in English "twenty-two" or "two two" or "tutu" reminds us that anything can be made cutesie or twee, even a harsh number like 22. And shouldn't that give all some hope for a cuter future?

Things have been getting warmer here, but still unusually cool, which suits me just fine. It's lovely bike riding weather.

To any new eyes, this is a monthly writing club where we share progress on our writing related projects and general goings-ons. Everyone is free to participate either by commenting on others' work, or by sharing their own goals and/or achievements.

Welcome to the 21st writing club update. On pondering this number, I'm reminded that we are currently in the 21st century according to the Gregorian calendar, and that this will be the only century I'll really get to know. But there have been at least 20 other of these things (and I'm told perhaps even more), so that might give one pause / perspective.

My region has been unusually cold for March, which though it's unexpected, I've been trying to enjoy it. Let some of the last cold into my bones so I can bring up the memory when I'm too hot, later this summer.

So this is the monthlyish writing club update where regular participants are encouraged to share progress on their monthly goals and goings-ons. Anyone is welcome to chime in with their own happenings, or comments on each others happenings.

Welcome to the 20th writing club update! I can't let the twentieth such club pass without giving props to that great generative tool to so many impromptu stories: the d20 die. How many stories, written or oral, have started from a group of friends gathering to tell a collaborative story--literally rolling with what chance gives them...

Speaking about rolling with what life gives you, some astute members and visitors (welcome!) with functioning calendars may notice that it is actually March, but I maintain real time does not resume until Sunday has finished. So in this liminal place of the week-end-almost, let us take stock of the year so far, and our hopes the coming months.

Welcome to the 19th writing club update, and first update of the new year! Continuing with my numerical tie-ins that no one asked for and which I refuse to give up, XIX is the number of The Sun card in the tarot deck. It's currently a blistering winter here, so a kiss of sunshine sounds lovely.

Anyway, according to Wikipedia, this card is "often seen as a sign of achievement and authentic self-expression" which sounds great for writing, so whether you put any truck in tarot, you could do worse than to head into the rest of the year with that thought.

I hope you've all had a brilliant year so far, but even if you haven't (maybe especially so) I want to hear from you. That goes for any passersby: feel free to chime in with your thoughts or writerly projects.

Welcome to the 18th writing club update, and the last day of the year according to the computer. Looking at, ummm let's see... Oh! Looking at E1M8 of Doom (1993 video game), the last level, or "mission" of the first episode (the level chiefly authored by Tom Hall & Sandy Petersen, with score by Robert Prince) has you confronting two "Baron" enemies. And isn't that just like life? The Barons may differ (financial ruin & job loss, or capitalism & fascism), and the weapons too (revolution, or mutual aid, or rocket launchers), but the struggle is the same.

Anyway, good luck to us all in the coming year with your own Barons, whether personal or societal. Also, speaking of shareware (Episode 1 was offered freely), let us now sharew...words; about, our projects!

I won't @ everyone in this post, mostly to emphasise that blessed randos are just as welcome as regular participants. So here's to our writers 🥳️ I look forward to reading your updates!

Welcome to the 17th writing club update!

Before launching into the writing club, I have a little preview of something @JacobCoffinWrites has spearheaded: a wiki resource for solarpunk writers who are looking for realistic visions of the hopeful world to be. You might have noticed a new link to the 🎉 this brand new writing wiki 🎉 in our community sidebar. Anyway, I'll let the intro speak for itself here:

Writing aspirational fiction is hard. If you're trying to write a better world, you need to build actual, workable, solutions into your setting and that requires so much knowledge to do well. Descriptions in a single solarpunk scene on a pedestrianized city street could involve a mix of civil engineering, history, cultural knowledge, plant knowledge, city planning, accessibility outreach, mass transit vehicle design/infrastructure, and more. A whole story might add in permaculture practices, modern airship design and operation, phytoremediation, or all kinds of other stuff! Compare that to cyberpunk where there's both a sort of cultural familiarity to lean on, and a pass on bad ideas because you're writing in a dystopian setting, and the differences are pretty clear.

It's a lot for any one writer to try and take on. Luckily we don't have to work alone. Any future worth building is going to be pretty collaborative and consensus-driven, so it makes sense to build our depictions of it the same way.

(On that final note, we're still trying to figure out a way to let people contribute to this wiki.)

But back to the seventeenth writing club, in the sage words of chapter 17: Communicating with a PostScript Printer (page 571) of Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment, by Richard Stevens, /* don't want to write() to block */ -- but isn't that just the thing? Sometimes you have to write() in order to get through the block.

Speakering of writing(), here are our writer[]:

• @Clockwork
• @Ellie
• @grrgyle
• @hazeebabee
• @JacobCoffinWrites
• @johnny_deadeyes
• @ManualOverride
• @shamousk
• @solbear

As is it ever has been and will eternally be, blessed randos should feel totally free to drop in with their updates, or comments on the goings ons of others. This little writing club thrives on our interactions, so go interact!

Welcome to the 16th (5+5+5+1) writing club update. Looking at the intro to the 16th chapter of Procedural Generation in Game Design: Generative Art Toys by Kate Compton, we find the somewhat quaint observation:

Everyone loves being creative. And everyone likes discovering that they're more creative than they thought they were. For many years, people have enjoyed crafts like pottery wheels, Spirographs, Mad Libs, spin art, paper marbling, and tie-dye. These artistic toys helped everyday people make interesting artworks (even if those people lacked creative talent or inspiration) by producing surprising and emergent results from simple choices.

Now that we have digital systems, we can make art toys with even more surprising and emergent behaviour. [...]

This book (edited by Tanya Short, and Tarn Adams) was first published in 2017, long before the term "generative art" would take on a very different insinuation. I've certainly got some strong opinions on the subject of both interpretations, but this is a writing club update not my personal soapbox.

Having now fulfilled my self-imposed rule of introducing a quote related to the number of WC updates since we started, I now turn to an observation about my local climate/weather, before introducing our writers, and finally extending a friendly invitation to any lurkers in our midsts. :)

Up here in the Northern hemisphere, at the heel of October, it's starting to get chilly. The ideal weather for reading and writing probably varies as much as the individual writer, but for me this feels like book weather.

Speaking of individuals, here is the call for our regular writers to share their updates!

• @Clockwork
• @Ellie
• @grrgyle
• @hazeebabee
• @JacobCoffinWrites
• @johnny_deadeyes
• @ManualOverride
• @solbear

I think I'll move this list to the main Writing Club sticky post next update, since the @s don't seem trigger notifications consistently across applications. Let me know what you think, if you have an opinion on this.

As is forever the case, passers-by are very welcome to come on in and lurk, comment, or post their own updates.