There’s a new Camosun College club for students interested in creative writing. The Creative Writing Guild aims to offer a space for students to review, brainstorm, edit, and share their work with like-minded individuals.
Second-year University Transfer student Forrest Foster is one of the club’s founding members; he initially started the Creative Writing Guild as a way to spend extra time brainstorming with his classmates. However, the club has now expanded to welcome more budding writers from different classes and interests. (The club meets in various rooms in the Wilna Thomas building most Tuesdays from 1 to 4 pm; if you are interested in joining the club, or for more information, email victoriawritingguild@gmail.com.)
“Myself and a few others in my Speculative Fiction class sort of thought it might be a good idea, just so we could have a little bit more time to workshop our content together,” says Foster. “Then a few more people wanted in, so I decided to build the club from there, so I could have a little bit more resources and that way it would be a little more official.”
An essential aspect of the club is the group work involved, and Foster believes this will help to strengthen writers’ abilities.
“We’re a creative writing club, where we’re specializing in fiction, speculative fiction, and a little bit of script writing,” he says. “From there, we’re trying to develop everyone’s skills, because typically with creative writing, the best way to grow as an author is to get peer feedback and everything. So, we’re going to work together, even in smaller groups to see where we’re, like, not necessarily messing up, but where we could improve. So, we’re working together in that capacity… Our first official session [was] specifically around world-building. So, we’re going to work together to create a fantasy or sci-fi world and then use auto-generated prompts to build stories within that world.”
New group members are encouraged to bring a piece of writing they’re working on, but if they don’t have anything, that’s okay, too: Foster has some lesson plans prepared.
“[I’m] sort of working with a few of the teachers that teach creative writing classes, to sort of integrate a little bit with them,” he says. “But it’s sort of like, you can bring in your creative writing work, or you can bring in your own stuff, whatever you prefer kind of thing. And then we’re sort of going to tailor each meeting based on what people bring in; then, if nobody brings anything in, I’ll sort of figure out some lessons to go through.”
Creative writing—especially world-building—serves as Foster’s passion. He’s leaving Camosun for the University of Victoria next semester, and while fellow group members may miss his enthusiasm, there are plans to continue the club in his absence.
“The reason that I’m sort of passionate about writing is because I just really enjoy creating, specifically worlds,” he says, “and then figuring out how characters would interact in those worlds and how the preconditions of that world affect the psychological foundation of the characters that I create.”
According to Foster, the Creative Writing Guild offers a space for writers to focus on improving their craft, either at a hobby level or for classwork.
“You’re in an environment where other people have a similar hobby, so you can sort of let that shine through and work together to develop your own writing, that sort of stuff,” he says. “It’s also just a nice bonus to [do] your classwork. You can bring some of your writing that you’re doing for classwork, and then you can get some peer feedback as another source of sort of improving that work.”