Have you hit the wall writing in isolation?
Do you need a community of folks to keep you accountable,
help you work through story problems,
and show you how to level up your skills?
At Weeknight Writers, we know how difficult writing in isolation can be. We spent years doing it ourselves – and we’ve also seen how our writing levelled up when we found communities of folks who shared our passion for telling stories with the written word.
We’ve also seen what happens when writing communities fall apart. We know the pain of losing a community because the moderators simply don’t have time for it anymore, the frustration of seeing a community fail to protect its marginalized members, the sadness of outgrowing a writing group and having to turn elsewhere for the level of support you need.
That’s why we created the Weeknight Writers Pro community. This community goes beyond our public Bluesky and Zoom events to provide year-round support, including:
- Monthly worksheets for project planning, goal tracking and more, written by co-founders Dianna Gunn and Jade Benjamin
- Free access to our paid events
- Our Pro Weeknight Writers Discord, featuring: nightly and weekly accountability check-ins, weekly virtual write-ins, monthly social events, and much, much more
Weeknight Writers Pro will nurture you through every stage of your writing journey, from planning your first book to publishing your fifteenth.
“I’ve been part of the Weeknight Writers community since 2018, and in 2021 when I first started writing The Mycelium Palace, Dianna told me she wanted to beta read it before I even knew it would go anywhere. Fast forward four years, and The Mycelium Palace is actually a published novel, better than I’d have thought myself capable of when I started. That is in part due to the Weeknight Writers community and in major part due to Dianna being both my biggest cheerleader and second harshest critic (after myself).” ~ SM Reiher, author of The Mycelium Palace
I am Dianna Gunn, a fantasy and horror author who decided I wanted to write books at the tender age of eight – and drafted my first novel just three years later. I’ve since published two novels, one short story collection, and one anthology, building the author career I’ve always wanted. I also spent fifteen years flitting from one writing group to another, watching some fall apart and outgrowing others.
In 2018, I started a Twitter chat to connect with other writers. I enjoyed running the chat immensely, and especially loved watching writers learn new things about the craft and process of writing through our conversations.
I decided to take things to the next level in 2020, when everything went virtual. I took the lessons I learned from the writing groups I’ve been part of – what worked, what didn’t, what I wished more groups would try – to build Weeknight Writers. I’ve hosted over 10 virtual conferences and worked hard to build a community that can support writers at all levels, with a mix of accountability, social support, and educational resources.
I am the main facilitator of Weeknight Writers, running writing sprints, virtual write-ins, monthly socials, workshops, and more.
In 2020, I enlisted Jade Benjamin, a freelance editor and member of the acquisitions committee for Renaissance Press, to help her deliver worksheets, workshops, and other educational resources for writers.
Jade works primarily in the background of Weeknight Writers, helping build larger events like our Storycrafting Sessions (virtual conferences) and develop educational materials. She’s currently hard at work building a Manuscript Evaluation Course to help writers identify developmental issues in their books, with the aim of launching the full course in late 2026.
Together, we have almost 30 years of writing experience and 15 years of experience in the publishing industry. We bring all of this knowledge to bear in the community and educational resources we create for writers, offering a mix of writing, editing, and publishing resources. You’ll also get access to all of the support and knowledge provided by our 70+ members, ranging from unpublished writers to award-winning authors.
At Weeknight Writers, we provide three forms of support: community, accountability, and education.
Community
Our Discord server has channels for discussing every aspect of building a successful writing life. You can use the general writing chat to share your daily struggles and wins or chat about various parts of the planning and drafting processes. If you’re struggling with a specific character or story idea, bring it to the brainstorming area and work with our community to find a solution. If you’re looking for inspiration, head over to our writing prompts channel for weekly prompts shared by one of our community members every Wednesday.
We follow you through the rest of the writing process, too. In our editing support club, you can share your struggles with the editing process or celebrate your wins, post calls for feedback on snippets or even your entire book, and share resources that have helped you edit your story. You can turn to our publishing channels to discuss the general processes of traditional or self-publishing, share your frustrations with the submissions process, and find opportunities to publish your work. Once your work is published, you can head to the marketing area to share your links and discuss how to best reach your audience.
Want to chat about something other than writing? We’ve got space for that, too. You can share games you’re playing in the gaming channel, talk about movies or shows in the watching stuff channel, share your non-writing woes in the venting channel, and discuss your non-writing wins in the daily joys channel.
Accountability
We provide three layers of accountability:
- Nightly check-ins: Posted every night around 6PM EST, these check-ins remind you to write and encourage you to share your nightly writing struggles and wins. Want some extra motivation? Ask us to tag you in the check-ins and you’ll be notified every night when we publish them.
- Weekly check-ins: We ask you to share your writing goals every Monday, then check in on Fridays to ask if you’ve met your writing goals (or if you’re planning to meet them over the weekend).
- Monthly check-ins: At the beginning of every month, we’ll ask what your writing goals are. When the month ends, we’ll follow up to see whether you met your goals, celebrate your wins, and commiserate with your struggles.
We also run writing sprints most nights of the week and virtual write-ins to encourage you to stay focused on your writing between check-ins.
Education
We release monthly worksheets to help you with various aspects of writing, editing, and publishing. We also run monthly Q&As with our founder, Dianna Gunn, where both Core and Advanced members can ask questions about any part of the writing process. You can even use these Q&As as opportunities to ask about specific problems you’re having with your story!
Both Core and Advanced members also get free access to our Writing Roundtables, two-hour panels diving deep into subjects like Writing Trans Characters and Business of Writing: Understanding Admin as a Self-Published Author. You’ll also get the opportunity to vote on topics for these Writing Roundtables and panels at our free Storycrafting Sessions, ensuring that we’re teaching the things you want to learn.
If you choose the Advanced membership, you gain further access to education through structured monthly workshops. Topics we’ve covered in these workshops include:
- First lines
- Character descriptions
- Dialogue
- Book blurbs
- Author bios
We request input on workshop topics twice a year, giving you the opportunity to shape what we’re teaching—and choose what you’re learning.
We have two support levels, Core and Advanced.
Core membership
Core membership is for you if your main goal is to connect and collaborate with other writers. Priced at $21 per month, this membership level provides access to our Pro Discord, which includes:
- Nightly accountability check-ins to help you stay motivated to write every night
- Writing sprints on Tuesday and Friday evenings to help you get some words in after a long day of work
- Discussion areas for every aspect of writing, editing, publishing, and marketing—plus some fun areas just for socializing (or venting, because we all need to vent sometimes)
- Weekly virtual write-ins on Saturdays where you can connect with other writers and participate in writing sprints to get more words out
- Monthly Q&As with our founder, Dianna Gunn, with themes related to writing, editing, publishing, and marketing
- Monthly socials (biweekly during First Draft Fall) where you can deepen your connections with other writers
- Monthly worksheets (with weekly First Draft Fall worksheets in October) to help you improve your skills at story planning, writing, editing, and marketing
- Free access to all Writing Roundtables, our two-hour, in-depth panels exploring various aspects of the writing process
- Discounted access to all future Weeknight Writers courses, including our upcoming Manuscript Evaluation Workshp
- Access to the Storyfyre Pro 60-day free trial + 50% subscription discount to simplify planning, writing, and editing your projects
Advanced membership
Advanced membership is for you if you want to expand your writing and publishing skill set to build a career as an author. Priced at $35 per month, Advanced membership provides access to everything in the Core membership, plus:
- Monthly workshops (a mix of text-based Discord workshops and video Zoom workshops, valued at $30 to $60)
- Access to curated, small critique groups—with the opportunity to have your work critiqued by our founder, Dianna Gunn, leveraging her 20 years of writing experience and five years of editing experience
- Opportunities to participate in beta rounds of upcoming workshops and courses
- Free access to final versions of all future Weeknight Writers workshops and courses, including our Manuscript Evaluation Workshop
Catherine Winters
“After a long day at work, it can be difficult to muster the energy to even open my manuscript. Fortunately, the Weeknight Writers often remind me that writing a few words is the first step to writing a lot of words. Whether it’s helping set goals, encouraging each other to write, or just finding folks to brainstorm with, the Weeknight Writers group has been an incredible boost to my productivity as a writer.”
Nebula Award Winner Vanessa Ricci-Thode
“Weeknight Writers is one of my favourite writing communities! I look forward to the Thursday chats all week long and love interacting with other writers. Writing is such a solitary act, so it’s vital to find community!“
Jeffrey Ricker, Author of Three Left Turns to Nowhere
“I had reached a scene in my first draft that I just couldn’t seem to get through. No matter how many times I made a run at it, I seemed to bounce off it and felt hopelessly stuck. The Writer’s Block Buster worksheet made me realize I was hitting my head against a wall that wasn’t even there—I deleted the scene and the story started flowing again.”
M.S. Ocampo, Author of My Ex is a Vampire
“The Weeknight Writers Community has been there as I worked on and published my debut YA urban fantasy novel My Ex is a Vampire. I love that I found this community of writers who understand me and help me out and encourage me even when I’m not working on my writing.”
Join our Sustaining Membership Program today!
Weeknight Writers is for you if:
The Weeknight Writers community is hosted on our Pro Discord server. If you’re already on Discord, all you need to do is connect your existing account to our server using the instructions provided by Ko-fi on purchase. If you’re not on Discord, you’ll need to create an account, but you don’t need to install any apps; Discord works just fine in all popular browsers!
Weeknight Writers is built to support writers at every stage of their journey, from first-time writers to authors with numerous published books under their belts. Our accountability check-ins and write-ins are great for published authors struggling to stay motivated and our social areas include special channels for discussing the issues authors encounter after publication. Our workshops can also help published authors learn about new areas of writing or learn how others approach familiar aspects of writing, thereby learning new things to incorporate into their processes.
Our Weeknight Writers Core membership is designed to provide accountability and community support for anyone who wants to finish projects, regardless of whether those projects are intended for professional publication, posting on a site like AO3, or pure personal enjoyment. However, our workshops are typically designed for people intending to publish, so we recommend sticking with the Core membership if publication isn’t part of your plans.