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9. Writing Arcade was a complicated system of challenges, leveling, feedback, and different types of boss battles. We even had a mascot designed by Jessie Fisher (our Publications Manager)! Wally was an adventurer guiding us through different types of challenges to collect tickets, earn XP, and be entered in giveaways. It was a lot to manage with everything else so the challenges and battles were converted to the Prompts page in the Resources section.

 

10. Our Achievement Tracker was originally designed to help writers keep track of their Arcade progress in our centralized system. They earned tickets from reading and sprints, boosters from writing streaks, and there were different pages for different types of challenges. When they were ready for a Boss Battle, their challenge would appear in their personal sheet. Feedback was included and if they beat the boss, they leveled up for harder challenges! Now, our Achievement Tracker is pared WAY down so there’s much less strain on me. It’s downloadable from the Home and Submissions pages.

 

11. Aesthetic: when were first figuring out what our group would be, we talked about the color scheme and agreed green is obviously the superior color. It’s synonymous with learning, health, and rejuvenation. We looked at hundreds of shades before deciding on ours. Leigh and I were getting into fountain pens at the time so we wanted to be sure we included a quill in our logo. 

 

The original logo was two Ws with crossed center lines and a quill as the final right-side line, with a “written” loop underneath. It wasn’t fancy—I made it myself in Photoshop with limited skill. After a decade with the big WW, we rebranded in 2024 with a simple quill in a circle. We felt it was time to drop the Ws because all I could see of our logo at that point was a big, fat X in the middle. It felt like we were losing our heart because we couldn’t find the Ws anymore. We tried other W shapes in the new logo but we liked the simple quill best.

 

As for why our site is sans serif… I am dyslexic. My dyslexia form cannot process serif fonts—it’s a jumble of lines rather than letters—so I need a clear distinction between vertical lines and rounded shapes. And no, those “dyslexia fonts” are not at all helpful. Some even give me motion sickness.

 

12. We like to try things; there’s almost always something new launching, about to launch, in preparations, or on the “when I have time” list (a different list from my big, public To Do list). This means there’s also a bunch of stuff we’ve tried and decided it wasn’t for us. Here’s why: people learn in different ways. Something that works for you won’t work for someone else and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean the information is wrong, we’re just different people. We try everything we can think of to help as many people as possible. When we decide to close a project or retire a segment, it’s because that thing, set up in that way, wasn’t as effective or helpful as we’d hoped. We take a step back and analyze why it didn’t work and what we could do to improve it. Then we try it a different way. Sometimes that new way works, sometimes we have to start over again. I’ve always believed that learning is a lifelong pursuit: we never stop growing. We should always keep trying and challenging ourselves to explore and be and do more. Because we’re worth the effort.

 

13. Future Goals: so, SO many things on this list… when we started back in 2014, we made a list of goals and estimations for when we expected to hit those targets. Within our first five years, we wanted to be able to ✓ publish writers, ✓ provide more than just Writer’s Games, ✓ internship program, ✓ provide static resources to grow the craft, and ✓ be a registered nonprofit. Our ten-year goals included ✓ our own conference, ✓ dynamic workshops, ✗ our own in-person retreats (paused), ✗ a dedicated youth section (intentionally scrapped), and ✗ grant funding.

 

Revisiting this list for the next five and ten years, we’re currently working on self-paced classes, improving the critique partner (“feedback buddy”) system, and adding more publishing opportunities for flash fiction. We’ve been trying to pull together a segment for our YouTube channel where someone reads indie books aloud, once or twice a month. Also on our new 5-year list are expanded print and digital distribution and we still, rather desperately, need some funding. I want to pay authors.

 

 

Co-founding and being part of this community has changed my life in ways I never expected. Thank you so much for taking this journey with us! 

 

 — Theresa, Leigh, and the incredible team at The Writer's Workout