Word Raft has sunk, but shed no tear, Word Yacht is here. It's like Word Raft, without the bad stuff:
Word Raft encouraged publishing every week. Publishing every week is a wrong goal to have, because we end up chasing regularity instead of focusing on quality. Instead of giving ourselves time to sculpt that essay to perfection, we settle for less and publish something mediocre just to fill people's inboxes.
Word Raft was not a supportive community. Most messages in our Slack group were just people sharing links to their articles this week. Everyone was just focused on themselves and writing their own articles.
Word Yacht is different.
The purpose of Word Yacht is to be the most supportive writing community on the planet. That means we use Twist to discuss our half-baked ideas, great essays/books/tweets that we have read or are currently reading. That means that we are not afraid to share drafts that we want to get feedback on, even if we end up not publishing them. This collaboration and discussion breeds new ideas for future essays.
We achieve this goal by giving more than we ask in return. We don't see reviewing someone's essay as a chore, but as an opportunity to learn and become better writers. We understand that editing is a practice of our own writing skills. Great editors are great writers.
We understand that it's better to publish one high-quality essay than a hundred mediocre ones. Even though there are millions of essays on the web, people are still starving for high-quality essays. By promoting to edit each other's essays, Word Yacht helps us all become better writers and increases our chances of achieving high-quality status.
We don't pressure you to publish every week, but still encourage you to write regularly. Just how you don't publish every photo you take, you shouldn't publish every essay you write. If you are considering to publish an essay, Word Yacht is a great place to get feedback before it goes live.
Join us if this aligns with your views on writing.
The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.
Michelangelo