Quincy University Creative Writing Club has been hosting a meeting every Thursday from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. in QU’s own Gray Gallery. Hostess, Lindsey Witt, started the club on September 12, 2024, and hosts two types of meeting every other week since then.

“I just want a little low-key space for creatives,” Witt said.

The creative writing events usually consist of a small group of around five participants including Witt. On the the first week the evening starts with a slide show and a discussion of the topic or lesson of the meeting. After a discussion of what the topic might look like participants all get a writing prompt that they worked on for a while and then got the opportunity to share, if they so desired.

The goal of Creative Writing Club is to offer a space to write but also a comfortable space to bounce ideas off of other people. Witt targets the club at more introverted people and creating a safe space.

The theme of these weeks consists of creating compelling characters, poetry, plot development, world-building, writing emotions, and the components of writing a good scene. There will also be guest speakers, usually other English professors at Quincy University.

The second week of the rotation is a lot more “laidback”. The meetings will be “come as you are”, “bring what you’re working on” and “let’s write together” less-structured sessions according to Witt.

“I think it’s also good for more introverted people because you can kind of exist in the same room but not really have to interact with anybody if you don’t want to,” Witt said.

One student, Kayla Flange, said how she likes the way the club is organized but also how much she enjoys learning from other people’s writing styles.

“It’s nice, I like how there is a presentation part to help you with like tips and stuff and then also there’s like the collaboration and doing something together as a group. It was like fun to hear everyone like read their stuff. It was like a little nerve-racking reading my own but like it’s interesting hearing everyone’s writing styles and you know hopefully I can learn from it,” Flange said.

Another participant, Jack Urbanciz, said he stopped by to support club life at Quincy and said he thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it to others on campus.

“And you know it’s been frankly a little sad that we haven’t had a really active club life here so especially this year I have seen more and more organizations come to life on campus and I just want to support them any way that I can, and It seems lovely. It’s a great collection of people. Very creative. Very smart. I would come back here and recommend it to others,” Urbanciz said.

Members of campus help support clubs and events, like Creative Writing Club, by showing up. 

Creative Writing Club is growing with every meeting, and Witt has future goals once they are established. Once they get off the ground members hope to participate in the National Novel Writing Challenge that happens every November.  

With big hopes and realistic dreams, Creative Writing Club hopes to make an impression and give people something to write about.