Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Aspiring furry writer with much to learn

Hey everyone – hope you’re open to a new face around these parts!

My name is Zeigler; I’m a Chicago-area jaguar, furry, fursuiter, and aspiring storywriter. I’ve published a couple of comic collaborations in the past – with the artist Kyma in Sofawolf’s “Heat #14” and Swallowtail’s “Consumer’s Digest #3,” and for several years a now-moribund TF-themed webcomic called “Panthera.”

I’m trying to come back to my roots of writing full stories rather than just scripts, in particular for furry audiences, but I’m feeling continually hamstrung by a variety of things. I currently write painfully slowly, yet often find myself racking up word counts without really moving plots forward very much. I have trouble with subtext, show-not-tell, and authentic dialogue and character personalities. I have very little perspective on the quality of my work – whether I need to just work on basics still, or trust that I’m actually writing something decent and just plunge forward with what feels right. Sometimes what I think is a great, unique story idea turns out to be horribly cliche. And reading some of the truly great furry fic lately (been absorbed in Tempe O’Kun and Ryan Campbell, both of whom I got to meet at MFF and both of whom are lovely people) has me feeling pathetically inferior. Etc., etc.

And I’m finding that all of these things are already hampering my resolution to write more short stories this year and maybe even get one or two published. One thing I feel like I’m really missing is a writer’s community to chat with about stuff and figure out how to actually get where I want to be. So I finally decided to sign up here!

I’m hoping to find folks up for read-swaps and edits, ideas on where to submit various pieces, and generally a community that can help me learn to be a kickass furry writer. :slight_smile: Thanks for having me on board!

Welcome, and thank you for the follow on Twitter too. I’m just up the road from you in Sconnie, though my own TF books featuring the modern day remnant of an ancient clan of werecats take place in Chicago’s Jefferson Park neighborhood. Because my main character and her family are all either native-born Poles or Polish-Americans. Glad to talk shop on either forum.

MJE

Thanks, Mark! Your series sounds interesting. I’ll have to give it a read at some point. I’ve got a pretty significant backlog of reading to get done, but I do love werecats. :3

Definitely would love to chat sometime.

Welcome to the forums!

Welcome! Good to see you here. :slight_smile: