How Outside Indie works:
Think of a topic and submit your idea for review.
The inspiration might come from a song you’re listening to, a recent experience, or a random thought. Whatever it is, we can help you set your direction.
Write out your essay.
Now, through the lens of music — whether it be a band, a song, an album, etc. — explore and flesh out your idea.
Send us the draft. We’ll help you edit.
Part of our mission is to foster a collaborative and supportive writing environment where people can gain confidence and improve on their writing.
Sit back, and enjoy your published piece.
Your work is done. Share with friends and family. :-)
Some writing advice from our favorite writers:
Lauren Groff: If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again.
“When you are creating a work of art, or trying to create a work of art, what you want to do is fail, I think, because what happens is you come up against the boundaries of what you can and cannot do, the boundaries of what you understand and what you don’t understand. And understanding that, you are either able to skirt it, or to move the borders.” - Harvard Gazette 2019
Curtis Sittenfeld: Plan a time and set up the circumstances that will allow you to write regularly
“Though some people have knocked out an entire short story in a single sitting, it’s more realistic to see writing a story not as an inspiration-fueled creative binge but as a multiweek project. It’s one you’re a lot likelier to finish if, rather than waiting for the muse, you create the possibility for inspiration by planning a time and setting up the circumstances that will allow you to write regularly…” — New York Times
Sandra Cisneros: Write from a true place
“I tell my younger writers not to write about the things that you remember, but the things that you wish you could forget. Those are just huge in your heart. And that way you can get right to the seed of a story. That’s usually where I begin. Some memory I wish I could forget. All you have to do is write from some very true place in your heart. You cut to the chase when you write about things you feel frightened to think about, the things that haunt you. I think that’s important for writers to remember: Write from some true place.” — Writer Mag
Zadie Smith: Macro and Micro Managers.
“I want to offer you a pair of ugly terms for two breeds of novelist: the Macro Planner and the Micro Manager. Macro Planner makes notes, organizes material, configures a plot and creates a structure — all before he writes the title page. [While Micro managers], have no grand plan, their novels exist only in their present moment, in a sensibility, in the novel’s tonal frequency line by line.” — Brain Pickings
Stephen King: Write primarily for yourself, and tackle the things that are hardest to write about
"I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever….//The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings.//Stories are found things, like fossils in the ground ... Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world.” — Forbes
Wally Lamb: The first draft is tortuous, but revise, revise, revise.
“Dialogue comes naturally to me and I can hear the characters’ voices in the scenes. Hardest thing: creating something out of nothing – the first draft is torturous. But I love revising. If you demystify the process, it comes down to four strategies: what can I do to make the draft better; what should I cut out to make it stronger; what do I need to do to clarify it; and finally, what should I reposition.” — USA Today