We’ve organized our active Discord server into different topics to keep conversations from colliding. Learn more about Discord.

Last revised February 2025

Prologue

• Introductions: Share a little about yourself and your writing.
• Announcements: Official Pen & Pier bulletins and reminders.
• Suggestions & Feedback: Let us know your ideas for improvements.

Creating

• Prompts: Did your muse go on vacation? Is your writing check engine light on? Want a new angle to explore your story? Challenge yourself to answer a prompt — or share one with your fellow authors.
• Plot Help: If your arcs are flat, your plots meander, or you just feel something’s not right about what you write, ask your fellow authors specific story questions here.
• Anthology: A place to exchange ideas, ask questions, and talk about our annual short story publication.
• Brainstorming & Developmental Editing: Come to this channel if you are working on Plot, Worldbuilding, Character development, or any aspect of story preparation and first-draft process.
• Beta Readers & Critiques: Writers in the revision/editing stage can ask questions here, ask for beta readers, or post excerpts of their work for feedback.
• Sprints: Word sprints are timed writing sessions when you and other creators try to write as many words as possible during a certain amount of time.
• Writing Tools: Resources, tools, apps, techniques, typewriter recommendations — share what you use to write, or ask a question about what you don’t.
• Pubs and Subs: Here we talk about publishing and submissions, including where, how, and best practices for getting your amazing work to eager readers.
• Anthology: This channel serves as a place to exchange ideas, ask questions and talk about the anthology. It will also give reminders and status updates.
• Art Gallery & Fan Art: Feel free to post here any sort of art related to your writing, related to what you love as a reader, or even just visual art/expression unrelated to writing in any way.
• NSWF: 18+ only! This channel is for adult discussions about writing. We do not allow sexually explicit images or gifs in this server, including this channel. Please keep the rest of the server PG-13.

Events

An entire set of channels dedicated to our various events. These include:

• Friday Write-ins (in person)
• Writing With Littles (in person)
• Wednesday Critiques (online)
• Wednesday Read-Alouds (online)
• Wednesday Chats (social hour online)
• Annual Writing Retreat (in person)

Check out our ongoing events calendar

Community

• Check-ins: Weekly we reach out to active writers, usually Friday evenings. However feel free to update on your progress (or lack thereof!) at any time.
• Cheer: Come here when you need some pumping up or if you have something to help motivate other writers. We all his writers block sometimes and need support to keep writing.
• Celebrations: Come here to share any good news with us, both writing and non-writing. Share when you get acceptance or rejection emails, share your birthday, graduation, or anniversary plans.
• Self Promotion: This is where writers can come to promote their work. Whether you are releasing a book, you have a story in an anthology, or a new post on your blog/substack, come here to let us know and get more eyes on your work!
• Interviews: Bimonthly Q&A to give us a chance to practice interview skills as well as get to know each other.
• Neurodiversity: A safe place to talk about neurodiversity issues affecting us as writers and our works
• Yelling Into the Void: A safe place for hot-button topics to be discussed. Come to vent or come to discuss how this is inspiring, or even blocking, your writing. Please follow the servers civility rules in this channel especially!

Life Beyond Writing

• Memes: Keep them PG13 in this channel, but all those memes tickling your funny bone are welcome here, writing related or not.
• Media Share: Any good movies, shows, music that you are into lately? Feel free to share and discuss here.
• Y’know, Just Stuff: Chat about life, local news, and what’s happening outside of our writing lives. Keep it friendly and free of inflammatory topics.
• Games and Distractions: What game is pulling you away from your craft? What book is taking up all your free time and keeping you up at night? Share with us!