As sophomore year begins and my friends and I have a year of experience at creative writing, a lot of us have begun to write novels. This is the goal of many writers, but it’s often never reached, or for us, reached only in senior year, when we have to write our thesis. I started writing my novel this summer, then forgot about it for a couple months, and I’m only now coming back to it because so many of my friends are working on similar projects.

Having a group of writer friends all trying to achieve the dream is really helpful when I’m writing. We’ve all decided to form a sort of writer support group, which is really just planning writing days, promising to edit each other’s novels once they’re in good enough shape to be seen by the public,  and complaining about the menaces of our projects together. We try to schedule days where we all clear our schedule and write in silence together, which sounds weird, but it works, I swear. Some of my most productive days have stemmed from setting aside all this time and knowing my friends will eliminate any distractions until I’m writing, as I would for them. It’s also fairly common for one of us to ask each other random questions that only make sense when you consider the genres of our projects (dystopian, horror, and some sort of historical fantasy, I believe). Like, a couple of months ago, Aubrey asked if we all go on a trip to Glen Park together so he could find the best place in the park to kill a monster. Or, a few weeks ago, I asked Tanner to help me figure out the best way to injure a character during a protest in an unfortunately-not-really-that-far-future dystopian take on San Francisco. It’s also great when I’m so done with writing, because chances are someone else is too, and then we can commiserate. Generally, having friends that are writing is the best when one decides to embark on a mystical, frequently discussed journey such as novel writing, and I’m so grateful that I’ve found all these wonderful writers in Creative Writing.