Back-to-School Relaunch

Fictionistas is back from summer hiatus and ready to mingle

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

‘Sup Fictionista!

We’re so excited to be back. If you didn’t know we were gone, that’s understandable. The newsletter climate is a swirling vortex of “I’m taking a break” declarations followed by near immediate rebuttals of “Just kidding!”

But, kidding aside, we really did take a break this summer. After our last virtual meetup, our remaining founder,

Jackie Dana

, stepped down as team captain after a lengthy and illustrious stint at the helm. While still somewhat high on her newfound freedom, she made the mistake choice brilliant decision to hand the boat keys over to the two troublemakers troublemakers whose names appear at the top and bottom of this post.

Fictionistas is, at its heart, a collaboration. But no well-oiled machine can run smoothly without a few sets of capable hands at the controls. Consider us your hosts, if you must, but know that this little slice of Substack heaven is as much yours as it is ours.

Here’s a run-down a what’s happening as we kick-off the new “school” year.

Prompt Party Central

Nicole Rivera

will be reviving our monthly Prompt Celebrations later this month! If you’re new to this offering, here’s a brief introduction:

The Great Substack Prompt Celebration is a month-long writing adventure open to any and all fiction writers who are currently writing their own Substack. Simply put, we will be sharing a monthly writing prompt to inspire you to write fiction with added support, community, and celebration. You’ve already taken the plunge to share your writing on Substack (which is a huge leg up from most writers lacking such fortitude), what we want to offer you is threefold:

1. we want to have some fun with fiction,

2. we want to meet up with fellow Fictionistas to write together, and

3. we want to shine the spotlight on your fiction and your Substacks here on our Fictionistas page!

In an effort to support one another in our writing aspirations and Substack readership we have developed a series of writing activities, throughout the month. We will

• host a live Zoom Writing Prompt Party

• send a Writing Prompt to all Fictionistas subscribers

• host a thread for Substack writers to share their fiction based on the prompt, and

• at the end of each month, we will feature a handful of Substacks and fiction pieces from the thread.

Jump into the launch post below for more details!

The Chat Starts HERE

Our subscriber Chat is open to all subscribers. Got a question about a Substack feature? Want to put out a call for a critique partner? Need to share some excellent news about your writing journey? Jump into our Chat and start a thread or jump into one that’s already been started. We hope it goes without saying that Chat participants should refrain from posting irrelevant, trollish, or spammy things in our community Chat, lest they be deleted, muted, and/or blocked indefinitely. Friends, this is a nice place for nice people who write fiction. Let’s keep it that way, PLEASE!!!

Many people find the Chat feature easier to navigate in the Substack app. If you’re not already an app user, you can download that bad boy here.

We welcome your feedback on what we’re offering, your suggestions for new or different types of content, and your valuable tips, tricks, hacks, and practices in the realm of FICTION WRITING!!

And now a word from our guest post intake specialist:

Fictionistas is Substack's biggest (and coolest (and sexiest)) fiction writing community. If you've got something you'd like to share with the rest of us, you can submit a guest post here. The submission form is pretty self-explanatory, but here's a quick breakdown of the process:

1. Write something that seems like it would be useful to fiction writers on Substack.

2. Submit it using the form.
   (Please don't bother submitting anything promotional or highly controversial.)

3. We review your submission.

4. If we decide to publish it, we'll let you know when it will be posted.

5. If we decide NOT to publish it, we'll also let you know, so you can post it to your own Substack if you haven't already.
   (Please do not expect an explanation.)

By the way, we're happy to accept submissions of posts that you've already published on your own Substack, as long as you don't mind us republishing them, rather than cross-posting. We don't do cross-posts.

Photo by Chris Montgomery on Unsplash

Well met. Virtually speaking.

Virtual meetups will return this fall … with two added twists.

First twist: The meetup recordings will no longer be publicly published along with those amazingly details recaps. Why? Because those were a TON of work for the organizer and not necessarily something we feel must live in our archive for generations. THAT SAID, if you are unable to attend a meetup live, but would like to know what we chatted about in your absence (it wasn’t you, I promise, and if it WAS you, it was only GOOD THINGS) you may request a temporary link to the Zoom recording and/or transcript. Just drop us a DM or email us at fictionistas@substack.com and we’ll hook you up.

Second twist: Your co-captains live on the East and West Coast of the USA respectively, and we can only host virtual meetups while we are both available and awake—simultaneously. And, as a duo, we only plan to host about one meetup per quarter.

So…

We want YOU to FEEL FREE to organize and host your own meetups!!! If you’re so inclined. Whether they be virtual or in-person, just write up a post with the date, time, and location (or link) details and submit it via the guest post intake form, and we’ll broadcast it to the community on your behalf. Our hope is this will allow for more time zones to be represented, as well as open the doors for more focused discussions around genre and other nifty, nichey stuffs.

Thank you for supporting Fictionistas!

We hope you had a rejuvenating summer and are jazzed for another season of creative collaboration and community love, fiction style.

Cordially,

Meg Oolders

and

J.E. Petersen