writing with friends on discord voice chat
Over the past few months, I’ve had three habits that have become natural to my writing process:
Opening my Word doc
Making my morning coffee
Joining the voice channel on the Discord I share with my friends
So, let’s talk about why the simple act of being on Discord has become a part of my routine.
the comfort of knowing someone’s there
Writing is a solitary activity, and often a lonely one. Sometimes that solitude is the draw of being a writer—especially if you’re an introvert like me—and sometimes, it’s nice to know that you’re not alone.
Whenever my friends and I hop on the voice channel, we’re usually muted as we write. So, why are we on voice when we could just chat through text? I think, at least for me, the act of joining voice is a signal that they’re there, and they’ll be with you as you write.
It’s comparable to study/writing dates at cafes with your friends. Even though you’re usually on your own laptops most of the time, it’s comforting to have the company of someone else across the table. To me, our voice channel serves the same purpose. It’s also more accessible for our friend group, especially since the seven of us live in four different time zones.
Even if we stay muted most of the time, being in the same channel is enough to know that we’re in this together.
brain dumping in text channels
This is one of my favorite parts about writing with friends.
While I’m writing, I have so many thoughts: thinking about my story arcs, laughing at my characters, even battling mental blocks. And, because I’m annoying, I need to yap about those thoughts.
When my friends and I are on voice, we can quickly drop a note in the chat about what’s going through our minds. This includes anything from snippets, character lore, memes, or even Spotify links to songs related to our wips. Our hangout chat is a shared archive where we’re free to dump anything and everything on our minds.
being each other’s motivations
One of the best motivators with any activity is knowing that someone is doing it with you. And the simple act of seeing another person on the voice channel inspires me to sit at my desk and crank out some words, because I know someone else will be doing it with me.
When we greet each other, the conversation usually starts with asking each other what we’re working on for the day, and wishing each other luck on smashing our goals. Stating the goal out for others’ eyes is also a good way to keep yourself accountable! For me, the knowledge that someone knows my goal pressures me to complete it (in a good way).
But even though we hold each other accountable, we also give each other grace! Writing is hard, and multiple crashouts are bound to follow—that’s when writing with friends comes in handy.
We’re often going from “you can do it!” to “it’s okay if you can’t right now”, and it’s such a wonderful and necessary balance. It’s a great comfort knowing that you have people that will cheer you on at every checkpoint, and also tell you it’s okay to slow down.
yapping on voice
Sometimes, we actually do use the voice channel for its intended purpose—to yap!
If there’s an idea I’m stuck on and it’s too much to explain over text, I’ll unmute to explain my thoughts. Other times, we just yap about anything: the wips we’re working on, our latest crash outs (which, let’s be honest, makes up 90% of our yap sessions), and updating each other on our lives.
I’ve been writing for most of my life, and I always considered it a solitary activity. Partly because I used writing as a way to escape the world and I needed that activity for myself, partly because I never understood the logistics of writing with another person. But because of a server that started out as a Nanowrimo accountability space, because of the mornings I started on Discord laughing at memes in the hangout chat, because of late night yap sessions crashing out about anything and everything—I couldn’t imagine trying to write any other way.
This post is really just an excuse to write an appreciation post about my writer friends, because without them, writing wouldn’t be nearly as fun. So, to my Zendaya Friends, thank you ♡
(we, unfortunately, do not have a photo of all of us on at the same time bc of timezones)
