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For faithful writers

Wednesday, 05 December, 2007

Right. Now onto the Big Idea for the Month (Bec beat me to blogging about it but let's not hold that against her), which I am rather enjoying thinking about. (Why is it that when you get a good idea, it feels a new and magical and wonderful—like two things collided in your brain and produced some delicious flavour?) It's not really my idea—Greg had it first (yes, my best ideas are stolen from him!) but I like to think that he, Haoran and I are all thinking along similar lines. I remember finishing my Creative Writing major at the University of Wollongong, and thinking I wish that there was some sort of network of Christian writers, and also wanting to be part of making that sort of thing happen.

I want to put together a site for Christians who write which will have all sorts of resources to help them in this endeavour. I don't want it to be a daggy Christian thing but I want it to be overtly Christian because I think the way we approach writing is unique and far-flung from the sort of postmodernism philosophy of artistic production that was drummed into me at Uni. I was thinking it could have:

• Articles—article on the philosophy behind why we write as Christians (service not selfishness); Scriptural encouragement and warnings; Greg Clarke's 10 Tips for Writer's Block; how to run a writing group (suggestions); how to host an open mike night; some of the training stuff we do at Word by Word (e.g. Toby T's thing on collaboration which was excellent and really really helpful); the A5 journal vs. the A6 journal (vs. the Hipster PDA), etc.
• Documents which are currently sitting on the Word by Word site (no, you can't have access)—like “How to Give Feedback” and Greg and Tony's feedback form;
• Reviews of “How to write” books—like The Little Red Writing Book (which I still need to read) and Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg (dying to write a review of that one!);
• Café reviews by Dave on the best places to write in Sydney (and drink good coffee), plut it would have somewhere where you could submit your own café reviews if you live elsewhere);
• A random writing exercise generator (for when you're stuck);
• A sort of manuscript assessment service (Greg's idea): send us something and we tell you where you ought to submit it for publication;
• A group blog (at this stage, I was thinking that Bec, Guan, Haoran and I would look after it ... and maybe Kathleen, if she's keen, but I haven't asked her yet. I haven't really asked Haoran yet. Consider yourselves asked!) We could have guest posts by others. The blog would focus on writing and aspects of writing. It would also aim to show people what the life of a writer/bunch of writers is like (the way that Neil Gaiman's blog does, though obviously without the fame and fortune and people bringing you cool things at signings);
• Something for the future: a facility to allow others who want to start up their own writing groups for Christians to advertise their meeting dates. Something easy with a generic template, some way to integrate Google Calendar feeds, create mailing list/discussion groups ... this is way out of my league ...;
• (If we're feeling brave): forums. But I'm really not a forum person and I'd need someone like Gordon to moderate it.

If you have any other suggestions of things you'd like to see on this site, leave a note in the comments (I make no promises though about implementing them). At the moment, I'm still thinking through the whole thing, plus there may be scope for some sort of association with The Faithful Writer. Stay tuned.

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