Apologies to @etiolation, if they are still around and it's a problem, for coopting this thread.

I want to start writing. My goal is to be a famous and well-compensated pundit with lots of beautiful young groupies and first class tickets spilling out of my inbox.

I'll settle for having a minor impact making someone's life a little better.

But, I really don't know how to get started in making it useful, how to engage in a broader community of writiers and develop and connect with an audience.

So I'm reaching out to the highest quality online community of which I am a part:

Is there anyone here who knows their writing has impacted another? Would you care to share the how's, the why's, and the wherefores?

Is anyone here a part of a writing group that's open to new members? Would you share?

Is there anywone here who has made money as a writer?

My particular writing focus is how to increase the level of "goodness" in the world. I don't even yet have a fully formed idea of what I think that is, perhaps a good topic for an essay. But, I don't even really know what an essay is. Somehow I got through a liberal arts education with decent grades, but don't seem to really know diddly squat about abstract thinking. More importantly, I don't have a well defined goal of the point of anything, with one exception: connection. The only time I truly feel at peace in this world is when I feel connected to another human. And it's a thing that perhaps a lot of folks take for granted, but which I was (presumably inadvertently) trained to avoid at all costs as very young person.

So, if you have any thoughts on how to develop focus and form, and identify venue, and raise profiles and get feedback, I'd be most obliged.

All the best and all the blessings

This is something I've been struggling with for a couple of months now.

I want to make a website. I have the design I want to implement. I have a few things I want to post there. I have what seems to be a reliable hosting platform ready for use.

What I don't have is the URL.

It's a conceptually-difficult problem, because I want this URL to be permanent. I don't want it to be my name, because I don't want this thing I make to be about me. It's about what I do. This what I do is what needs the name, and I have nothing.

A few people around the Internet know me as ThatFanficGuy, but using that creates false expectations, because my writing is mostly original. A few people around the Internet know me as FirebrandCoding or simply Firebrand – it's my GitHub handle, among other things – but it's an old name that I'd like to transcend.

Essentially – and I hate myself for saying this – I need a brand name. I need a banner to unite the wide collection of all the things I do under a recognizable symbol. I write, worldbuild, code, design, blog, make games, photograph, potentially make music and even record podcasts... All of this needs encapsulation, and I've been racking my brain for a good name to no avail since November.

A great example of such a name would be Magic & Wires. The website is currently empty. It used to be a game dev company, led by Firestream, who made Destiny RPG (now defunct) and Titan Conquest. If you scroll down on the main page of both games, it says "Made of magic and wires", which is such a cool way to use your name. I'm not one for murder, but I'd kill to have a name so cool.

Has anyone experienced something similar? How have you dealt with it? Is there some sort of theory behind picking a good name for your project?

For any sort of art in general. What are you excited about creating?

For me, I'm a photographer, and I've got some plans for some large format shooting during my camping trip. Because my trip lines up nicely with a nearly new moon, and I'm going to be in an area with nearly no light pollution, I want to try capturing the Milky Way on slide (color positive) film, and also doing a shot of some star trails behind a lighthouse in that area, or star trails reflecting off the lake.