What to Look for in a Writing Group. Try these tips!
If you’ve been in a working writer’s group for a bit now, you know what to expect and what you want to see happen during that time session.
But if you haven’t been to a writing group yet and are looking for one you may want to consider these things.
Desire to publish.
Not everyone wants this, but I highly recommend it. To be a part of a writing group should be enjoyable but it also should be a little bit of a pressure cooker.
You want to be around people that are going to push you to be better and do better. A good pressure to have on yourself is to aspire to publish and one easy way to do that is to put yourself immediately around others where their desire, drive, and motivation is to publish (even better if they have already published before and are continuing to.
Don’t join a group that doesn’t have goals. Having goals is important for writers since it is tempting to put things off.
Actually, has stuff written down.
Too many writing groups aren’t actually a “writing” group.
Some like think tanks where everyone goes for weeks talking about world-building and plot ideas, but after weeks of talking nobody has written anything down.
Are we really a writing group? 😂
Another thing that can happen is they can turn into feel-good parties. You get to share your ideas for your story and everyone claps and praises your ideas. Again nobody shows any REAL writing work. They just talk about writing.
Openly and candidly share.
Look for a group that is open.
Open to share their writing and open to your writing. Open to giving honest but helpful critiques.
Helpful critique is very specific and meant for real edit changes. Not helpful critics are general and usually don’t contribute anything of use or value to the editing of your work.
“This is awful and no one would ever read it.” Is not helpful in any way, whereas, “this opening confused me. It’s long and I’m not sure if we are actually going anywhere.” Is helpful and gives you an inside look into what a reader might feel reading the first few pages of your book.
Open to differing opinions.
Personally, I find groups that push back against ideas for social reasons to be off-putting. (You’ll want to find a group that helps you thrive in the genre you’re in.)
If you want to write a romantic comedy, but the group thinks that’s cliché, then you’re probably going to want to find a different group. They won’t be very helpful to you.
If you’re in a group that’s hyper-political and you want to write an epic fantasy, they might push you in a weird direction.
Willing to do serious discussions.
You’re not there for the cookies (what I mean is, you are not ONLY there for the cookies 🙂 ). A group that will be most helpful to everyone involved is a group that is all willing to put in effort together and be thoughtful about EACH member’s writing.
You can do a certain amount of time on each one or you can say that the entire writing session is dedicated to one and each person gets into a rotation of sessions. It doesn’t really matter how you break it up as long as it’s fair.
There to help each other.
A big red flag would be several members that dominate the conversation and only ever want to talk about their work.
Join a group that wants to take time to help everyone’s work.
A willingness to receive helpful feedback and to also give helpful feedback is something you should look for in a healthy writing group.
It is 100% okay to leave a group.
If you find that you’re in a group but it doesn’t help each member out or the environment feels toxic, do not feel bad walking away from that group. It’s time being spent and you might benefit from spending it elsewhere.
So don’t feel too bad if you realize suddenly that your group is not helping each other and you see that you should step away.
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What to Look for in a Writing Group
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That’s all for now.
Hope that helps!
Happy writing!
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What to Look for in a Writing Group
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