Welcome to the website of Writer's Block, the writing club of Naperville Central High School.
We are open to members of all skill level and experience who currently attend NCHS. You can join any time during the year.
Meetings usually occur three times a month. At meeting, we will do one of the following three things: write to a prompt and work on an instructional activity, critique members' writing, or go on some sort of writing-related social outing (or, if the weather isn't nice, do a fun writing-related activity at school). We maintain a Google Documents account to which we upload our writing. Before each critique-related meeting, each member reads the pieces that have been selected to be critiqued. Then, at the meeting, we discuss the chosen pieces.
If you are interested in joining, fill out this simple form and you will be added to our email list. We sent out emails before every meeting. The emails will tell you what to read for the meeting and give you other important information and updates!
(Note: You will be taken to a Bravenet.com page and asked
to confirm your information. This is normal. Just click "Continue"
and you'll be on your way.)
December 30, 2009
We have drastically changed the schedule for second semester. Please
take a look at it under the "Meeting Schedule" tab.
November 19, 2009
Our next meeting is a critique meeting and is on November 23. Please
read the pieces indicated at the top of the site.
October 11, 2009
Our next meeting is a critique meeting. Please read this,
this, this,
this, this,
and this for the
next meeting. Make sure to print them out and write your comments as well.
September 22, 2009
Thank you to everyone who came to the previous meeting! Our next meeting
is on the 28th and will be a social outing. However, please meet in room
310 at 3:25 PM.
September 14, 2009
Our first meeting was a wonderful success! We look forward to seeing everyone next week. If you are interested in having one of your pieces critiques, as long as it is under one page, please email it to us as soon as possible. We will read and critique it at the meeting.
August 14, 2009
The forum has been created! You can access it here!
June 18, 2009
A PDF of the tentative calendar for next year has been uploaded! You can find it here!
All meetings are held on Mondays in room 310 and begin at 3:25 PM.
Our first meeting of the 2009-2010 school year will be on September 14.
Here is a list of all the meetings for this year:
September - 14, 21, 28 January - 11, 25
October - 5,19, 26
November - 2, 9, 23, 30
December - 7
February - 8, 22
March - 8, 22
April - 5, 19
May - to be determined
Here's a smattering of links relating to writing -
Writing Advice
by Lawrence Watt-Evans - Provides a number of short, humorous essays
on all steps of the writing process.
NaNoWriMo - An annual challenge
to all writers. 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. The site
also contains some resources and forums.
Creative Writing
Prompts - 329 creative writing prompts, some more interesting
than others.
Dragon Writing
Prompts - A blog with some very interesting story ideas. Be sure
to check this one out!
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
of America - The website of the SFWA. It contains a lot of writing
resources by a number of sci-fi/fantasy authors, warnings of publishing
scams, and other interesting information.
Robert J. Sawyer's Webiste
-The author of many science fiction novels including Calculating
God, Sawyer's site contains many articles on pages about writing.
Seventh Sanctum - A useful
page with a variety of random name/place/technology/etc generators.
If you're interested in local author visits, check out the Events
Page on the Anderson's
Bookshop website.
Some good books about writing (email me if you'd like to add to the
list) -
Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine (HarperCollins, 2006)
From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction by Robert
Olen Butler (Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2005)
The two Presidents for the 2009-2010 year are Ike Swetlitz and Lily Hislop. Our publicity head is Claire Jia. Our staff supervisor is Mrs. Dolan. You can contact us here.