The Value of Writers' Groups

I'm very fortunate to be a member and de facto organizer of a terrific writing group with more than thirty members. But for about ten years, I clung to the image of the writer working alone in feverish passion, skin whitening in a dark room and genius sprouting from the constant internal focus.

That got me nada.

Yes, writing is a solitary act, but unless you really are a literary genius, the interaction with other writers will prove invaluable. Henry Miller once said, "Write during the day. Live at night." He was pretty much as close to genius as a writer can get (in my humble opinion anyway), and he was anything but a wallflower. A member of my group mentioned that some study was done recently that found that writers who socialize with other writers, produce more than writers who shun interaction for the sake of putting more words on the page.

I joined a literary writing group, which worked well enough for me for about a year, until I realized I wanted to explore more outlandish topics than most of them did. I formed another group, just two writer friends and me, but that died after just a couple of months. But with those two groups I realized that talking to someone about writing fired up my desire to write more. Knowing I would have an audience for whatever I wrote gave me a great incentive to get writing, and having readers who were expecting me to improve forced me to improve.

My break came two years ago when I was wrapping up my masters in English. The professor for one of my classes was Sally Caves, who wrote science fiction and was the creator of Reginald Barclay on Star Trek: The Next Generation. At the end of class, I asked her if she knew of any local, serious science fiction writing groups around. She knew of one, but it had just disbanded. She connected me with the person who ran it, Therese Piecynski, who writes reviews for Tangent, and who has published in Asimov's, among other places. Through Therese, I met other local writers, and discovered many of them were taking a class the next semester, taught by Nancy Kress. I'm fortunate to have Writers & Books, a hub of writing, in my home city, and doubly lucky that a science fiction giant like Nancy teaches there.

Nancy's class was terrific, and several of my classmates were pro-grade writers. I became friends with them, and after the class ended, six of us restarted Therese's old writing group, called "D309" after the room number in which the group used to meet. Along with writers from the earlier incarnation of the group, we gathered eight members and scheduled our first meeting.

It was pretty much a disaster.

We had novice writers like me, and professional writers in the same group. Some wanted workshops. Some wanted to socialize. Some wanted to just keep connected with other writers. After a lot of discussion, we figured out a way to please everybody; we split the group.

We met twice a month, once as a workshop, and once as a social night. Anyone could attend whatever they wanted. Stories or novel chapters were circulated via email two weeks before a meeting, and we would meet at someone's house. Authors to be critiqued were responsible for bringing some munchies for everyone else, so if nothing else, you got free food out of it. We went around the circle, each person talking for about three or four minutes about points they wanted to make about the manuscript, and then it was a free-for-all, where most of the really good ideas were aired. Most people would write up comments to give the author, and the result was a wonderful time of talking, laughing, and getting amazing insights into fiction from points of view you'd never thought of before. We usually did two stories per meeting, with a break in the middle for talking and eating.

Nancy continued her classes at Writers & Books twice a year, and a number of us from the group would usually attend. By the end of each semester, we would agree on "recruiting" a few more writers into the group from Nancy's class. Others come in from recommendations.

The group almost suffered from its own success. At the beginning of 2006, we had 28 members, and at one meeting, where 14 members showed up, the critiques took ridiculously long. We decided to split again, this time into a social night and two workshops, one for short story writers and one for novel writers. The novel writers themselves have divided in half in order to give better feedback and to read more chapters each month. Each month we now meet once for a social night, once for a story workshop, and once, in two locations, for a novel workshop.

The group, from my perspective, is fantastic. Everyone in it is serious. We're friends, but we're also comrades, looking to help each other write better and get published. There are times when I sit back from a discussion and watch all these people passionately pulling apart a story to see how it works and how to make it better. Some people look at stories from a market perspective, and some from an artistic one. Some people look for originality above all else and some people focus on the language. We have both fantasy writers and science fiction writers. Some writing for adult audiences and some for children. Some writing novels and some short stories. And to have all these personalities digging into a piece of fiction, especially when it's yours, has taught me more about writing than all the books I've ever read on the subject.

One of the surprises I've had while organizing the group, is how much effort the organization takes. Figure out dates to hold each meeting, watch out for holidays, make sure we have submissions for each meeting, make sure everyone knows about changes, and the biggest issue, make sure everyone feels interested and included. I used to send around emails in a haphazard way to keep everything in line, but I've resorted to a regular newsletter so people at least get the feeling that this beast is organized. I've also started a web site. On it I post news about meetings or successes of our writers. We keep everyone's submissions on file there for members to download and critique. Addresses, driving directions, phone numbers, and email addresses are all there. We've even started a discussion forum to continue critiques, or just to chat between meetings. The site helps that all-important feeling of inclusion for all the writers, whether they attend every meeting or just stay on the email fringe.

So this is my bit of writing advice for June: Get away from your computer and find fellow writers. Find out where they lurk in your city, and find out how to socialize with them. Start a group if you can't find one, and advertise for members. That interaction function much like reading does to fire up your brain into directions you never would have explored otherwise.

To close with an example of the group working to perfection: One night we were critiquing a story by one of our members, and in the discussion, we all agreed that his ending wasn't working. We probably hacked away at why it didn't seem to resolve properly, looking at everything from additional action to cutting action, to figuring out what the underlying themes were and whether they were being properly explored. The writer went home and rewrote the ending based on that conversation, and a month later, Craig Delancey had sold "Openshot"* to Analog. It felt like a group victory.

If you've got any questions about forming or running a writing group, or have tips you want to share, please feel free to comment on the blog or drop me an email. Go write!

*(Keep an eye out for the story. I'll post when I know what issue it'll appear in.)