Find Support
Whether it's your shrink, your best friend, or a team of fellow writers, find it anywhere you can.
Writing Communities
Discerning who to share your work with is key to growing as a writer. If you find yourself having to defend your work, or cowering from “critique” it’s time to get specific about what your community is doing for you.
I am active in four different groups!
1. Frequency
One of my writing groups has morphed from weekly, to every-other-week, to just once per month. It started during the pandemic, and weekly meetings were welcomed when everyone was on lock-down. We’ve shifted to accommodate life, and once per month works. Other groups started at once per month, so getting to know one another is taking longer. Establishing a rhythm that works for all participants is fundamental to making it work.
2. Size
If the group is smaller than four people, there are times when only two of us show up. It’s tricky to shift to one-on-one support when, in some cases, I’ve never even met some of these writers in person. (yet) Generally, my writing partners are all good conversationalists and we don’t suffer. At the opposite end of the spectrum, I’ve found groups of eight (or more!) means there are always one or two folks who tend to “lead” (or dominate) and a few who don’t get equal time to share their work. In my experience, four or five writers is ideal.
There are salons where I pay to participate in co-writes - writing to a prompt given by the facilitator - and those can get big: I’ve seen zooms from 17 participants up to 80 and more. These are good for a different kind of support, more like attending a church and being in the congregation; and rarely do I get to actually “share.” However, I do learn a lot from observing how different facilitators teach, and from hearing others share their work. Kind of like listening to a sermon and rejoicing in the choir.
3. Guardrails
Nothing is more critical than agreeing on how folks will share work, and how writers will respond. There are many feedback structures, but the point is that your group agree to one, and, that someone enforce it. Most of the groups I’m active in use Suzanne Kingsbury’s The Gateless Method, or, Jane Underwood’s Round Robin Guidelines. Both hinge on positivity, as opposed to criticism. For me, this has been indispensable in growing my baby artist, feeling more brave in sharing my work.
One of the groups that I’ve been in the longest has lost a few members, and in one case, with hard feelings. We’ve since adopted a more gracious approach to giving feedback. It’s something we had to learn the hard way.
4. You Get What You Give
Actively participating in four different groups is time consuming, and I gotta figure if I were still working full-time I wouldn’t be able to sustain this level of commitment. I know my efforts have helped my creative process and my memoir’s progress, otherwise I wouldn’t continue. But I’ve also benefited tremendously in ways I couldn’t have predicted: making friends, and finding fellowship among folks who share a common goal - believing in ourselves as writers; ultimately, eventually, as authors.
Only fellow writers can give me what I need. Yes, my shrink is encouraging and supportive, and my besties root for me, but writers writing in community provide me with the accountability, the fellowship and the faith I need to keep going.