Coming in 2025

Gold and white fireworks on a dark background

Happy New Year, lovely WordFam members! Welcome to a shiny new year. 

At the end of last year, we surveyed for your thoughts, preferences, and feedback. So many of you responded and we are incredibly grateful for all your input! It helps us so much to know what works for you, what isn’t working so well, and what else we might do that would be of value. 

We are listening, and we hear you! 

Your WordFam leaders are hard at work making plans for the year ahead, and we’re so excited to share what’s coming with you all! We don’t have everything fully figured out yet, so we can only give you teasers in places, but we wanted to give you an idea of what you can look forward to. Buckle up, this is a big update!

Discord Server Improvements 

If you’re on our Discord server, you’ll see a few changes there already. We’ve reorganised the channel list a little to make it easier to find what you’re looking for. We have also added some new roles to support some of the new things we’re bringing in. Check out the announcement in the server for more information!

New Recurring Events

We have a good base of monthly and bi-monthly events already, both in-person and online, and what we heard in the feedback was you want more! Some of these we have done before, and this year we’re making strides to make them part of our regular line-up. 

Here’s what we’re adding:

  • New Words with the Fam event: Southside Edition – A new in-person event located on the south side of Brisbane for catching up and writing. This joins Brisbane and Ipswich to bring us up to 3 WWTF editions around the SE Queensland region!
  • Write Write Goose (aka Words and Goose Silliness with the Fam) – An online writing sprint and adventure event! We trialled one near the start of the year, and together we drew pictures and wrote a wild, goosey story in between writing words in our own projects. You enjoyed it, so we’re adding it to our monthly line-up!
  • WordFam Watches – Movie nights are back! Join us to watch a movie and chat about it in Discord.
  • Games with the Fam (GWTF, aka FamGam) – Fun with online games, of various kinds: party games, writing games, drawing games, MMOs, and whatever else people want to play.
  • Craft with the Fam (CWTF) – Let’s get crafty! Bring your art or craft project, show us what you’re working on, and make some progress with company.

Locations and times for these events are being worked on and will be finalised in the near future. Keep an eye on our events calendar for what’s coming up next and make sure you have the right Discord roles to be pinged for them.

Special Events

We’ve also got some one-off special events in the calendar we hope you will enjoy!

In February, Roving Words: River Edition will be asking people to join us on the water to write. Roving Words encourages the WordFam to get out into the world and work on words (or write wherever you are), and our special editions are taking it to some fun transport options. Later in the year, we’ll be climbing aboard trains for the Rail Edition. You can meet up with us if you’re in SE Queensland to rove and write together, or hop on a convenient alternative close to you! Details of the River Edition will be rolling out to you soon.

We’re happy to announce we are looking to hold another Writers’ Asylum later in the year. It’s a day of writing challenges that is always a heap of fun! It has been running annually since 2013, and after taking a break from the Asylum in 2024, we’re bringing it back this year. 

We are also putting another WordFam Retreat together! The goal is to host a writing weekend on North Stradbroke, where people can work on their writing projects in a dedicated indoor space, by the poolside, or out on the beach. Details are still in the works, but what we can tell you so far is that we have it lined up for August. We’ll update you with information as we have it!

WordFam Writing Extravaganza (WWE)

Last year, we ran the first WWE: Wrestling With Words: an entire focus month for our writing. We set ourselves goals to motivate us, with extra events, dares, and support throughout the month.

This year, we will be doing it again, with some changes! We’re moving it to July, which is a more convenient month for most of us (especially compared to November!). We are also planning some extra events, prep, support, and special things we can’t tell you about yet. It’s still in the early stages of scheming, so watch this space for more announcements over the first half of the year. 

Is that everything?

Definitely not! We have some other initiatives in the works. They range from small tweaks to adjust and improve the WordFam experience, to large projects that will take some time to put together. It’s too early to announce everything, but please be assured that we have lots in store for all of you. 

Got a shiny idea? We’re still listening, so let us know. Want to help out with something? We are always happy to hear that! 

Write on, lovelies, and thank you for being a part of our WordFamily!

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