The Community

In 2006, WritingForums.org was founded to assist new writers in finishing their first novel, to help aspiring writers improve their craft, and to enable motivated writers to get published. There was clearly a need for such a community at the time, and we believe this remains true today.

Ten years later, WritingForums.org is one of the largest creative writing communities on the web, with over well over 1,000,000 posts and nearly 50,000 registered members. We’ve built unique community resources and activities such as Role Play, Writing Contests, and our Writing Workshop. Our community has seen members finish their projects and get published. We’ve even seen members get married and have children after meeting through our community.

Setting Our Eyes Towards the Future

Both the internet and the creative writing industry have experienced disruptive changes over the past ten years. The emergence of the internet and digital publishing have fundamentally changed the industry, making it easier than ever to be a successful writer. Today, as the industry becomes more competitive and continues to change, we believe there is still a need - perhaps a greater one - for an active, engage, and collaborative creative writing community. We believe we can be such a community - a community that encourages writers of all types and experience levels to pursue and achieve their goals, regardless of what they may be.

It is important for us to understand why we exist and what we are here to do, both as an organization and as members of this community. We must understand not only what we want to become, but how we intend to get there. With a clear vision of the future and an understanding of our values and how to reach the future we want to achieve, we can accomplish anything. This is why we are publishing our organizational and community mission and vision statements. These statements are critical mechanisms used to ensure that our core activities, along with any changes, are in line with our core values and intended direction.

Our Vision & Mission

The purpose of a vision statement is to clearly identify a long-term picture of what an organization org community wants to become or accomplish, whereas a mission statement identifies the routes to achievement of such a vision.

Our Vision:

To enable writers to achieve their goals.

This simple statement is the core purpose of this community. We want to enable and empower all writers to achieve their goals, whatever they may be, by becoming a true community resource found nowhere else.

Our Mission:

To enable all writers to achieve their goals by providing an energized and collaborative community, comprehensive resources, and need-driven tools.

This Mission Statement explains how we are going to fulfill our vision. By forging a strong community, creating comprehensive informational resources, and developing needed tools, we can truly enable writers. Such a community would be an asset to any serious writer.

The first and most important aspect of our mission is ensuring an energized and collaborative community united in the pursuit of our collective creative goals. As individuals and as a community, we must commit ourselves to success and self-determination. As an organization, we should examine our actions and policies, encourage areas of discussion that align with our vision, and identify and embody core values. This is how we develop our community.

We also believe that community-driven informational resources can act as a competitive advantage for individual members of our community. Imagine if you truly understood the industry, were skilled at essential writing elements such as plot and character development, knew all the activities and practices needed to succeed at publishing, and possessed the tools and support system to carry out such activities. I believe that as a community we should focus on developing such informational resources, ensuring we're both knowledgeable in the industry and skilled in the craft. Comprehensive guides built through sharing knowledge and experiences, testing approaches, and compiling the best curated information will become a true asset to this community and its members.

Finally, by providing the correct, need-driven tools, we believe we can simplify difficult and mundane tasks writers often encounter, making the process of learning, writing, publishing, marketing, and soliciting feedback much easier.

Our vision is our compass, and our mission is our method of transportation.

Moving Forwards

WritingForums.org has an opportunity to grow as a community. We all have an opportunity to create an environment that helps achieve our vision of enabling writers - enabling ourselves - to achieve our individual goals as writers.

As an organization, we will use our vision and mission as our core criteria when determining policy, changes, future developments, and where to focus our discussions, time, and resources. When considering a decision we will simply compare it to our vision statement and ask ourselves: does this action bring us closer to our goal?

We also need to consider our purpose collectively, as a community. We need you to consider this purpose, individually. In order to progress towards this vision for WritingForums.org, our vision and mission statements must be in sync with the forum as a whole. We are publishing our vision as a first step to embodying this goal into our collective consciousness. We would like you to join us in discussing how to pursue our mission, and in discussing what values we should hold as essential within our community.

Over the coming weeks, we will evaluate the existing aspects of our site to ensure we are in line with our vision. We will also work towards identifying and agreeing upon our core values, examining our core competencies, and considering our strategic plan.

We hope to improve and clarify these statements if we can, making them more focused after considering input from the community. Please join us in discussing our vision, our mission, our core values as a community, and the future of WritingForums.org.