South Sound Speculative Fiction Writers’ Group

I’m a local professional writer who writes and edits in the speculative fiction genre (scifi, horror, slipstream, steampunk, silkpunk, afrofuturism, etc).

Here’s the subreddit for it. It has the Slack link, meet up dates, past workshop topics and resources, and other things as well. The group used to be called the Olympia Speculative Fiction Writers Group and only open to speculative fiction writers in Thurston County, but we’ve since changed and become the South Sound Speculative Fiction Writers’ Group. Our group is open to speculative fiction writers in Thurston, Kitsap, Lewis, Mason, and Pierce counties.

At the beginning of 2020, I created a group similar to the North Seattle SciFi and Fantasy Writers group and the Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers group, which are both groups with the mindset of helping writers improve and grow as professionals so they can see their work in print and reach their goals.

There is a workshop/tutorial component to the group. This is different than a lot of writing groups in the area because our workshops are about challenging ourselves with deliberate practice, so that we can become better writers through more than just writing but learning. A few past topics we’ve covered with our workshops have been flash fiction, description, openings, middles, speculative elements, and more.

We also have a decompression component where we don’t write and just shoot the shit talking about how our writing is going, cool books we’ve read, new ideas that are stealing us away from our current WIP, etc.

Ultimately the goal and aim of this group is to make people better writers, so that they can reach their career goals. That type of learning and growing of craft doesn’t work for people who are hobbyists or only write for their own entertainment. Writers who come to the group and participate are there to learn and grow and become published authors whether that’s full-time or part-time. This group is great for beginners and pros (we have both!) but not so much for hobby writers or people who like to journal due to the scope and shape of it.

The schedule is like this: