couple of days? Take it from us: you don’t want to be that guy. You want to be the sweetly unassuming friend-of-a-friend who surprises everyone by getting a novel published. So keep it to yourself, or within a very small group, until you feel you’ve done the absolute best you can on your own.
WRITING GROUPS
No matter what you’re writing, a time will come when you’ll need to show your work to other people if you hope to get published. Writing groups can be a great midlevel forum, providing a valuable service for new writers—as long as you find the right group. Though it can be interesting and educational to join a group in which members write in different genres, you might get more out of a group that includes people who write in a similar genre to yours. Kathi once spent a very long evening as the only comic-fiction writer in a room full of authors of heart-wrenching memoirs, and ended up feeling like a callous jerk. Try to find people at approximately the same skill level, something that is hard to quantify and even harder to accomplish. Despite the matchmaking-disaster potential, it’s worth giving writers’ groups a try.
If you don’t like any of the groups that exist in your community, you can start one of your own. As the leader, you’ll be able to define the rules and pick and choose the members. If you have trouble finding other writers in your area, you can also create or join a virtual writing community online.
All writers’ groups are different, and since you are starting the writers’ group, you get to make up the rules. Is that cool or what? As the initiator, it will be up to you to set the tone and provide some guidelines. Here are some tricks that have worked for us and other writers’ groups we know.
Finding Your Fellow Writers and Starting Your Group
Find members by asking your local bookseller or librarian or advertising online. It may take a while to gather exactly the right mix of people, but it’s worth putting some effort (and patience) into this part of the process. All members should be within shouting distance of the same level of writing skill. This doesn’t mean you all have to be working in the same genre—a variety of writing styles and themes can make for an interesting group.
Figure out how often it’s practical to meet, then require that members make a commitment to attend all meetings. More writers’ groups fall apart due to a casual attitude about attendance than any other reason. In this sense, writers’ groups are no different than bowling leagues, softball teams, and poker games.
Try to meet in person, rather than online, if you possibly can—and have those whose work is being discussed read aloud. Reading aloud to others is the surest way to catch all sorts of little things in your own writing, like redundancies, awkward phrasing, and redundancies.
Who Reads What and When?
Decide how many pieces, and pages, will be read and discussed at each meeting. In a larger group you might want to take turns, with no more than three or four members’ work being discussed at any one meeting. Distribute pages among group members at least a day or two before each meeting, so everyone has time to read and think about the material ahead of time.
Giving Helpful Feedback
Establish a positive tone. Even if a piece of writing needs a lot of work, find something good to say. Critique one another’s work in a supportive and constructive manner, but do critique; it doesn’t help the other writers if you see problems but are afraid to mention them. Be as specific as you can. “This doesn’t work for me” is not as effective as “I think if you cut the first paragraph and started here, you’d have a more engaging beginning.” The same rule applies to praise. Be very specific about what you like, and why. “You have a great sense of how to use dialogue—I can really tell one character from another” is more useful than, “Wow—you’re a good writer!”
Always write
WRITING GROUPS
No matter what you’re writing, a time will come when you’ll need to show your work to other people if you hope to get published. Writing groups can be a great midlevel forum, providing a valuable service for new writers—as long as you find the right group. Though it can be interesting and educational to join a group in which members write in different genres, you might get more out of a group that includes people who write in a similar genre to yours. Kathi once spent a very long evening as the only comic-fiction writer in a room full of authors of heart-wrenching memoirs, and ended up feeling like a callous jerk. Try to find people at approximately the same skill level, something that is hard to quantify and even harder to accomplish. Despite the matchmaking-disaster potential, it’s worth giving writers’ groups a try.
If you don’t like any of the groups that exist in your community, you can start one of your own. As the leader, you’ll be able to define the rules and pick and choose the members. If you have trouble finding other writers in your area, you can also create or join a virtual writing community online.
All writers’ groups are different, and since you are starting the writers’ group, you get to make up the rules. Is that cool or what? As the initiator, it will be up to you to set the tone and provide some guidelines. Here are some tricks that have worked for us and other writers’ groups we know.
Finding Your Fellow Writers and Starting Your Group
Find members by asking your local bookseller or librarian or advertising online. It may take a while to gather exactly the right mix of people, but it’s worth putting some effort (and patience) into this part of the process. All members should be within shouting distance of the same level of writing skill. This doesn’t mean you all have to be working in the same genre—a variety of writing styles and themes can make for an interesting group.
Figure out how often it’s practical to meet, then require that members make a commitment to attend all meetings. More writers’ groups fall apart due to a casual attitude about attendance than any other reason. In this sense, writers’ groups are no different than bowling leagues, softball teams, and poker games.
Try to meet in person, rather than online, if you possibly can—and have those whose work is being discussed read aloud. Reading aloud to others is the surest way to catch all sorts of little things in your own writing, like redundancies, awkward phrasing, and redundancies.
Who Reads What and When?
Decide how many pieces, and pages, will be read and discussed at each meeting. In a larger group you might want to take turns, with no more than three or four members’ work being discussed at any one meeting. Distribute pages among group members at least a day or two before each meeting, so everyone has time to read and think about the material ahead of time.
Giving Helpful Feedback
Establish a positive tone. Even if a piece of writing needs a lot of work, find something good to say. Critique one another’s work in a supportive and constructive manner, but do critique; it doesn’t help the other writers if you see problems but are afraid to mention them. Be as specific as you can. “This doesn’t work for me” is not as effective as “I think if you cut the first paragraph and started here, you’d have a more engaging beginning.” The same rule applies to praise. Be very specific about what you like, and why. “You have a great sense of how to use dialogue—I can really tell one character from another” is more useful than, “Wow—you’re a good writer!”
Always write
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