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Hello to all my fellow writers out there!
I have some major news regarding the Story Embers forum. It’s not bad news, but it may come as sad news to some. Seasons come and go, and we will be making changes to the site, so I wanted to let you all know in advance.
When we launched the forum 5 years ago, we dreamed of making it a thriving community where we facilitated important and engaging conversations, but very soon we realized we didn’t have the energy to keep the forum as active, fun, and deep/productive as we wanted it to be.
For years, we fought to keep it alive because we have personally experienced the value of an online Christian writers’ community.
Despite this, we recently decided that it was time to retire the forum.
Our reasons mainly boil down to two issues.
First, we on the Story Embers team have been trying to narrow our focus, keeping Story Embers sustainable while best serving our audience. To make time to do the /best/ things, we need to sacrifice a couple /good/ things.
Four key initiatives that are taking our time and energy right now are:
. Bringing in Christian novelists for live Q&A panel discussions.
. Honing the focus and depth of our blog articles.
. Continuing to make our summits amazing.
. Making Story Embers more sustainable for those of us running the ship long term.Secondly, we believe forum members may have better experiences on other online Christian writer communities. Over the years, activity has dwindled some, while other online communities have grown. While this may be an uncomfortable transition, we hope it will be the impetus to land you somewhere even better for you long term.
We are not closing the forum right away. We will gently close the forum down in one month.
There are other Christian writing communities both online and in-person we would encourage you to join. If you know of a good one, please post about it below! You can search for online forums, social media groups, and best of all in-person writers groups. You could even start your own writer’s group or forum. (However, I would discourage anyone trying to start an unofficial SE forum and moving everyone over there, because a good forum needs a trusted public person to moderate it.)
Three online forums we would recommend are:
. Authormedia.social – This online forum is run by Thomas Umstadtt, host of The Christian Publishing Show as well as The Novel Marketing Podcast. It is a more “serious” community and welcoming for writers across generations and genres.
. ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) – This is a premier paid (but relatively cheap) community. Benefits include, but are not limited to, access to online groups as well as local chapters.
. Realm Makers – Realm Makers is a faith-based conference for writers of speculative fiction, but more to the point, they have a very active Facebook group.That’s all for now.
Thanks everyone for making this an amazing forum!
This is really disappointing. I’ve benefited greatly from the discussion and relationships built in the SE forum and I believe the smaller active community as well as the broad range of experience levels represented among the authors on SE have both been great assets in fostering those discussions and building diverse relationships.
While I understand and respect the desire to focus the main team’s energy elsewhere, I wonder if seeking volunteer moderators from among the more active members of the forum might be a beneficial step before closing down entirely. Beyond the task of moderation, volunteers would be excited/passionate about keeping the forums alive and could, as a result, also be more active about prompting conversations if placed in that role.
Moving to other Christian writing communities might be beneficial for building cohesion of the Christian writing community as a whole–which is something I would advocate for–but 1) given the fact that there are still so many options, there’s also a high likelihood of simply scattering SE’s members to the four winds and 2) I think SE has a lot of unique qualities that add to its value vs. other communities (not making it “better,” per se, but making it a valuable option in the mix). Namely, it is a little smaller and therefore relationships are easier to build; it attracts authors with particular shared values, which fosters lots of important conversations where the end goal of all authors involved is the same; and at the same time it attracts authors of a variety of experience levels, which fosters lots of growth in the writing craft as younger/less experienced authors can find more experienced authors to answer their questions and older/more experienced authors can step in to answer those questions, building mentorship relationships and encouraging writing growth on both sides.
To mention other communities as requested, I can recommend the Kingdom Pen forums and–for the discussion of media and literature, though not writing itself–the Lorehaven Guild on Discord.
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Worldbuilding enthusiast. Singer. Fan of classic literature.
Man it’s been 5 years since I was on here! Just want to say, back in the day, this place ment a lot to me and thanks to you guys for facilitating it. I have some really good memories stored here, it will be sad to see them go…
INTJ- trying to grow into real wisdom; James 3:17
I am part of Christianwriters.com, which is a great writing site with many options for both informal fellowship, and constructive critique etc. Please check it out–I would love to meet some of you on there!
Quoth the raven, "Nevermore!"
https://silverpenstrokes.wordpress.comAh, I’m so sorry to hear the forum’s closing. I got to meet a lot of fellow authors on here, and some of us still keep in touch from time to time. Thanks so much for maintaining the forum all these years, though Daeus! It’s been a real blessing to be a part of this group 🙂
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. — Ernest Hemingway
I met two new people who have really helped me more than they can even know. I’ve only known about story embers for probably under six months, but as soon as I joined, I started growing tremendously! Even being so new, I am sad to see it go…I understand. It’s like a friend moving away, it’s not because they want to, it’s because they have to.
O light to us that wander here
Amid the world of woven trees!As someone who joined the forum on Day One, I don’t know how to feel about being here during the Last Days. While my own seasons of frequenting such forums are over, I do want to thank the staff for all the friends and memories I made from this place. Looking forward to seeing where everything goes…
"I set a melody upon the scenery I saw outside my window;
It's beginning in my spacy world."
- TKI almost forgot; a friend of mine has started a writers’ community (it’s free to join their forum, which they recently revamped.) If anyone’s interested in checking it out, I’ll leave the link below 🙂
We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. — Ernest Hemingway
While I would appreciate a response to my previous post (which may have just gotten lost in notifications), I have some questions about the end result of the forum shut-down.
Will the forum still be here, simply closed to new posts and replies? Will we, and others who stumble upon the site, still be able to access and reference the existing conversations? Or should we be going back to save any conversations we want to be able to reference because the entire forum is disappearing?
What is the long-term vision for the forum? Is this intended to be a fully permanent change, or is there a possibility of the forum re-opening given the right factors/resources?
Speculative fiction author. Mythology nerd. Worldbuilding enthusiast. Singer. Fan of classic literature.
Though I haven’t been involved in a few years, I always remember this forum with fond memories and would recommend it to my writer friends.
For those of you who might be looking for another community, Crafting Light is a private, Christ-focused community. It’s free, and admission is on an application basis to keep the environment healthy. We offer live training from a published author with years of experience teaching writing, contests, fellowship events, writing camps, spiritual edification, and more. If that sounds like something you might be interested in, you can email us at craftinglighttogether@gmail.com, or search for “crafting light community” or something along those lines to find the website.
I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have 🙂 Hope to see you there!
Thanks to the Story Embers team for fostering such a great community here for so many years. It was an inspiration to me, and I met some good friends here.
Crafting Light: Together we are stronger.
Find us online at https://craftinglight560578308.wordpress.comHuge thank you to Story Embers and especially all my Knaphollow Guildlings for this forum experience! I haven’t been active here in years, but it made a HUGE impact on me in my early serious writing journey. You guys helped me learn and grow and have so much fun. I don’t know where I’d be without this community!
"...by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."
We understand that closing the forum will be a loss, but having considered our options, we don’t think there is a way to keep it running that would be less of a risk/sacrifice than closing it.
The forum will be removed from the site, though I believe we will still have the archive on the backend. However, I do not expect the forum will ever be relaunched. At least not in next several years.
- The forum ‘Announcements’ is closed to new topics and replies.
