Write Conscious Writing Group Info
Publish your work and build your audience with a group!
Here are the links to this week’s separate offerings (7/8 - 7/14)
Below is information on the two offerings
Daily Poetry Challenge
Have you dreamed of releasing your poetry book and building an audience who loves your work? Well, the Write Conscious Poetry challenge helps get you into a daily flow of writing, publishing, and building an audience to launch your book.
A poetry collection is anywhere between 50-100 poems. It takes most poets years to finish a collection. But what if you could release a book within a year to an aligned audience of superfans who can’t wait to read it?
The daily poetry challenge will make this a reality by
Creating excess poems to build an audience. What do you do with the 250 poems that don’t make your books cut? Many others just leave them in journals. However, these challenges help you post them for free on Substack, social media, and other platforms to build your audience.
Help you break through limiting beliefs about writing poetry. Most poets composed multiple poems a day on a writing day but only selected the best to move on for heavy revision. The poets I attended school with only wrote poems for their future books. We will focus on both inspired work (published online) and heavily revised work (published in books.)
It helps you get comfortable with online publishing and its ups and downs.
Moves you toward continuity in your writing with subscriptions. According to the New York Times, 98% of books published by major houses sell less than 5,000 books. Poetry books sell significantly less than fiction or non-fiction. So, even if you do get lucky, get a deal with a big house and sell 5,000 copies, that would net you less than $10,000 in profit. However, if 200 people on Substack, Ghost, or another continuity platform give you $5 a month, you’d have a consistent income that netted you more than publishing books (even though you’ll be publishing books also.)
How the Challenge Works
Write seven poems a week and post them online. Pick your platform wisely (more on that below.) To be added to the leaderboard, the post must show the date the poems were posted.
Comment the link to your post on the respective week’s challenge page. If you are in a giving mood, read, like, and comment on the other participant’s posts to boost it.
If you want to go the extra mile, post your poems on Instagram, X, YouTube, or other social media platforms!
Save your best poems for your future book, or put them behind a paywall.
The daily poetry challenge is not a place to workshop or talk about your work. You can post explanations and introductory material on your post, and others can talk about it there. You’re just posting your work as proof you did it and for us to go give love to.
Weekly Prose Challenge
When you publish online, you do more than just share your ideas. You open yourself up to new people and opportunities and help others with your unique stories and insights.
In the weekly prose challenge, you will build an audience and your portfolio by publishing shorter pieces online in anticipation of releasing your book.
No one wants to work on a book for three years and have no one buy it.
None of you guys want to sell out and write marketable work to make money.
So, the only option left is to create an online presence through your writing to launch your book to a group of superfans.
This challenge focuses on any fiction or nonfiction work. However, I do not recommend posting book chapters. Save that for a book launch or behind your platform's paywall.
The weekly prose challenge is not a place to workshop or talk about your work. You can post explanations and introductory material on your post, and others can talk about it there. You’re just posting your work as proof you did it and for us to go give love to.
How the Challenge Works
Write at least 1000+ words of fiction or nonfiction and post it online. Pick your platform wisely (more on that below.) To be added to the leaderboard, the post must show the date your work was posted.
Comment the link to your post on the respective week’s challenge page. If you are in a giving mood, read, like, and comment on the other participant’s posts to boost it.
If you want to go the extra mile, post a preview or links on Instagram, X, YouTube, or other social media platforms!
Tips for Both Writing Challenges
Post on a platform that collects emails. If you want to launch a book and ensure people see your work, you need their email. Substack is my favorite for this, as it hosts a huge community of writers and allows you to share your work for free. It also looks clean! But I also recommend Ghost if you want a personal website with an email newsletter and monetization capabilities. I’ve used Ghost for previous projects and will be launching my personal website soon on Ghost.
This is one of two options I recommend. The second is below. Focus on a certain theme with your work. I would never ask you to change, dumb down, or sell out with the books you’re working on. But, for smaller pieces, you have a higher chance of attracting an audience if you focus on writing about a singular theme. For instance, you could connect this to your eventual book for double the results. I am working on multiple books that take place in the Southwest. All my shorter fiction pieces and poetry take place in the Desert. Even the authors I talk about lived and wrote about the Southwest. I am very knowledgeable about the Southwest, and writing about the Desert feels easy. You don’t have to do this every week, but if you have a book in the pipeline for release next year, I recommend it.
In opposition to what I just said, if you’re a beginner writer or just love following intuitive ideas, let that separate you from everyone else. My motto is “Mile Wide Mile Deep,” and there is no better long-term personal branding strategy than just sharing a wide range of creativity with your audience! When you do break through, your audience will become obsessed with getting to know you through your older content. This happened with my YouTube channel. I made 200+ videos about different authors before making a video about McCarthy or Wallace. Now, my biggest supporters go through all my old videos to see my thoughts on various topics. If I hadn't built that depth, I may be seen as a two-trick pony.
Don’t worry about how good it is. I will post plenty of work that doesn’t feel perfect every week. Most people scan writing online, and if you’re a perfectionist, it isn’t worth it to be afraid of the one dick who scans your work and doesn’t like it. My first blog posts and videos were not good! You’re giving people value for free. Plus, the writing you adore can be revised deeply and rereleased in a book or for another online publication/journal.
Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. You’re a well of creativity and can come up with someone just as good every single week!
I just noticed that this is for 7/8 - 7/14.
Has it stopped?