Writers find a home in storytelling workshops

running concurrently.

August Witkowski, the president of SWC and a senior double-majoring in English and psychology, described the turnout for the challenges.

The Storytelling Workshop Club (SWC) is a cozy enclave where aspiring fiction writers, from 6 to 8 p.m. on Fridays, may work on their writing projects among a creative set of likeminded people and forget about the academic troubles outside of Neverland.

One of SWC’s big events is the 24-hour writing challenge, held every semester since the creation of the club in 2019. Blake Tochilovsky, the liaison of SWC and a senior majoring in biomedical engineering, said the 24-hour writing challenge started initially for National Novel Writing Month.

“Basically, for people that don’t know what it is, it’s for the whole month,” Tochilovsky said. “A lot of people from all over come to write a full novel in a month, which is about 50,000 words.”

The most recent iteration of the SWC 24hour writing challenges was held on March 10, with two different competitions

“There were three, including me who wasn’t technically participating because E-Board cannot participate for a prize,” Witkowski said. “We also have the six-hour challenge, which a lot more people participate in. There’s a good dozen people that participated for a prize for the six-hour.”

Even though this challenge takes place during an incredibly restrictive amount of time, featuring sleep deprivation and the many productivity delays associated with that, some people are able to complete the monthlong challenge in just 24 hours. People entering the 24hour challenge are allowed to outline their plan for the challenge, and the story they want to write, but nothing that they write before the challenge counts toward their total.

Tochilovsky noted last year’s winner wrote almost 40,000 words, with Witkowski adding that the same person wrote almost

60,000 this year.

While the president is in charge of running the challenge and other various events, Tochilovsky, the liaison, is the star of the next of the club’s activities, the SWC Anthology —a long-form writing publication that was started last semester. Tochilovsky’s history with starting publications began in high school, when they were in the school literary magazine.

“It was something that I really enjoyed, and I feel like this could be something that we do here as well,” Tochilovsky said.

After the club got its budget, its members were able to publish their first edition, Hyacinth, with an initial circulation of 100 copies. The concept of flowers came from Tochilovsky, and the flowers were decided by the rest of the E-Board. Hyacinth was selected because of the meaning of the flower, with connotations of rebirth and fresh starts.

This semester, a edition released on April 24, 2023 was called Marigold. Tochilovsky claimed that all of the pieces were compelled to have this as part of the theme.

“Marigold may stand for despair and grief over the loss of love, beauty and warmth of a rising sun,” Tochilovsky said.

“[This includes] winning someone’s affections through hard work, creativity, desire for wealth, jealousy, sacred offerings to the gods celebrating the dead and promoting cheering good relations in a relationship.”

The future of the club looks bright, despite the fact that the president and liaison are graduating this semester. Witkowski is dedicated to making sure that the publication is left in good hands. “We have our new liaison coming in,” Witkowski said. “We hope to continue the publication. It’s very popular. It’s something we have been talking about doing for years.”