Cliche Can Kill (CCK) is a student-led organization created by writers for writers to encourage writing, along with workshopping works and providing writing activities for free.
“Essentially, it’s a safe place for writers,” CCK President Caitlyn Mlodzik said. “We basically meet up, we write to some prompts, and you don’t have to share what you write, so it’s a safe space to write. And then we also do workshopping, so if you have some work you’re doing for contests we’ll workshop it together.”
While the club is smaller now than it has been in the past, Mlodzik is still working to get students opportunities to develop and share their writing.
“This semester, we got some funding from ASUW and we got three members, which is pretty much all of us, to go to a writing conference, virtually because it was cheaper,” Mlodzik said.
“One of our biggest goals was ‘Let’s go experience professional writing, because writing conferences are really hard to get into, because they’re just so expensive. So when we got that grant or scholarship, that was really nice.”
Since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down physical meetings on campus, members of CCK have been meeting on Zoom to share and discuss their writing.
“I think it’s actually better on Zoom, in some ways because, as writers, we’re kind of reclusive sometimes,” Mlodzik said. “You don’t talk to people as much and your work is pretty individualized.”
CCK also has its own module on WyoCourses for its members to post their writing to share with members asynchronously.
“When we’re on Zoom, we’ll share a prompt and then we turn our cameras off and you have like 15 or 20 minutes to just write and then come back and talk about it. And you don’t have to share it, you can just post it if you want or read it out loud. So it kind of allows for this individualism and staying away from the gaze of other people.”
“Being in your own comfortable space and doing what you want to do. So this helps our members, even if it hasn’t helped recruitment, it’s helped like me and like whoever’s there consistently to get ready.”
CCK doesn’t limit its members to a specific genre of writing.
“It can be pretty much anything,” Mlodzik said. “I usually write fiction, so I do a lot of flash fiction. We have somebody who writes more poetry. Another member, sometimes he writes verse, sometimes he writes prose poetry. So we don’t really mandate ‘It has to be fiction’, it can be anything.”
One concern that Mlodzik emphasizes to potential newcomers is that members don’t have to share what they write, if they don’t want to.
“They might have that assumption. We try to make sure whenever we talk about it, or any posts we put out, we try to make sure that it’s clear that you don’t have to share. Sometimes we’ll go a whole meeting and nobody shares and that’s fine. If nobody wants to share, it’s fine to just move on.”
“We emphasize that it shouldn’t be an issue, but I think that’s just an assumption that people have going into it. ‘Oh, it’s a creative writing club, we’re gonna have to sit and talk’ but it might be something they’re not ready to share and that’s okay.”
Mlodzik also pointed out that part of the club’s mission is to help writers find their confidence and ownership as writers.
“Mostly our goal is to be a safe place where you can just write whatever you want. You don’t have to share it either, to feel more valid as a writer,” Mlodzik said.
“There’s a certain point where you’re on that verge of calling yourself a writer and that can be really difficult. Like when you feel that you’re a writer because you’re writing things, but can you call yourself a writer if you haven’t had anything published or people don’t look at your work? But it’s important that people know this is a safe place for all writers. We’re all writers and we’re here to write.”
