I joined the group in January. Five of us, all working on novels, meeting every two weeks on Zoom. The rule was that you bring at least one new chapter to each meeting, or you don't get critique time.

The first three meetings I had real chapters. After that I started recycling. I'd take an old chapter, change a few lines, add a paragraph, and present it as new work. I told them I'd written about 80k words by April. The actual number was closer to 22k. Most of what they were critiquing was the same forty pages I'd had in January, just rearranged.

I don't fully understand why I did this. I think I was ashamed of how slowly I was actually working, and the group felt like the one place where I had a reputation as a serious writer, and I couldn't bear to lose it. So I lied, and the lying got more elaborate, and now we have a meeting on Sunday and I genuinely don't know what to do.

I'm not asking for advice. I think I already know what I should do. I'm posting because I want to know if anyone else has done some version of this. Writers always talk about imposter syndrome like it's a feeling. For me it became a habit

started a fantasy novel two years ago. the novel is now maybe 30k words. the worldbuilding doc is 240 pages. I have a full magic system with internal economics, three languages with grammar rules, a religion with schisms, maps with elevation, a 600 year history with named rulers, trade routes, climate patterns. you get the idea.

the book is not happening because the world keeps getting more interesting than the plot. i know this is a problem. i need to be around other worldbuilders who get this specific sickness, who can tell me "yeah we've all been there, here's how you actually start the book."

looking for a discord or community that's heavy on worldbuilding but also pushes you to actually write the thing. the general fantasy servers are too plot-focused, the pure worldbuilding ones never write a single scene. somewhere in between, does it exist? please send

ok genuine question

does anyone else find this whole thing kinda.. lonely?

like, i love writing. it's the thing i come back to no matter what. but the actual doing of it is hours alone in your own head, and then when you come up for air there's nobody around who knows what you've been doing in there. you can't really explain it to people who don't write. "i spent four hours figuring out what one character would order at a restaurant" is not a sentence normal people accept.

i'm not looking for sympathy lol. i just want to know where everyone else is. like, where do writers actually hang out and talk to each other in 2026? not the big subs, those don't count, you don't know anyone there. somewhere smaller. a discord, a forum, anything.

dropping this ina few communities, drop your spots please. i just want to know the room isn't empty

ok genuine question

does anyone else find this whole thing kinda.. lonely?

like, i love writing. it's the thing i come back to no matter what. but the actual doing of it is hours alone in your own head, and then when you come up for air there's nobody around who knows what you've been doing in there. you can't really explain it to people who don't write. "i spent four hours figuring out what one character would order at a restaurant" is not a sentence normal people accept.

i'm not looking for sympathy lol. i just want to know where everyone else is. like, where do writers actually hang out and talk to each other in 2026? not the big subs, those don't count, you don't know anyone there. somewhere smaller. a discord, a forum, anything.

dropping this ina few communities, drop your spots please. i just want to know the room isn't empty

I think we need to retire this one, or at least seriously rethink it.

The advice as it's usually delivered tells beginning writers to write from their own experience. It's well intentioned. The idea is that authenticity makes for better writing, and that you can't fake what you haven't lived. But I've watched this piece of advice paralyze so many writers, especially young writers, who feel like they don't have enough lived experience to be worth writing about. They're nineteen and they've decided their life isn't interesting enough to be material yet. So they don't write.

The version of this advice that I think is actually true is something like, write what you can imagine clearly enough to make real. Sometimes that's drawn from your own life. Often it isn't. Tolkien hadn't been to Middle-earth. Le Guin hadn't lived on a planet with shifting genders. Toni Morrison wrote across generations she hadn't been alive for. The thing those writers have in common isn't that they knew what they were writing from experience. It's that they knew it from somewhere, which is a different and more flexible source.

The young writers I know who are doing the most interesting work are mostly not writing what they know. They're writing what obsesses them, what haunts them, what they can't stop thinking about. That's a much more useful instruction than "write what you know," and it's available to people who don't yet have the life experience the original advice assumes you have.

Write what you can't stop thinking about. That's the version that survives translation

ok genuine question. does anyone else find this whole thing just... lonely?

like, i love writing. it's the thing i come back to no matter what. but the actual doing of it is hours alone in your own head, and then when you come up for air there's nobody around who knows what you've been doing in there. you can't really explain it to people who don't write. "i spent four hours figuring out what one character would order at a restaurant" is not a sentence normal people accept.

i'm not looking for sympathy lol. i just want to know where everyone else is. like, where do writers actually hang out and talk to each other in 2026? not the big subs, those don't count, you don't know anyone there. somewhere smaller. a discord, a forum, anything.

drop your spots please. i just want to know the room isn't empty

ok genuine question. does anyone else find this whole thing kinda.. lonely?

like, i love writing. it's the thing i come back to no matter what. but the actual doing of it is hours alone in your own head, and then when you come up for air there's nobody around who knows what you've been doing in there. you can't really explain it to people who don't write. "i spent four hours figuring out what one character would order at a restaurant" is not a sentence normal people accept.

i'm not looking for sympathy lol. i just want to know where everyone else is. like, where do writers actually hang out and talk to each other in 2026? not the big subs, those don't count, you don't know anyone there. somewhere smaller. a discord, a forum, anything.

drop your spots please. i just want to know the room isn't empty