Finding Your People: Tips for Joining or Starting a Writers Group
On crafting community and journeying together
Hello friend, 👋🏾
Recently, I received a couple of messages related to the creation of writing groups and wanted to explore the topic further. I’ve talked in many venues about my own mastermind group, which has been going on for over ten years in one form or another. You can hear my group members and I go through a sample meeting on a recent episode of my podcast, Ink & Magic.
Having a support system of other writers has been an incredibly valuable resource in my writing journey. I’m not sure where I’d be without it.
Finding a community is one of my top recommendations for writers looking to grow and develop their careers, but if you’re currently toiling alone, how do you make it happen?
Joining a Writers Groups
At one time or another, I’ve been in the following kinds of groups:
Critique group
Professional writers association
Genre writers group
Writing class
Mastermind
Accountability group or partners
Writing sprint group
Marketing cooperative
Online support group
Information sharing group
I’m sure there are more out there as well.
The first groups I was a part of came about from attending a class at a local writing center or traveling to a writing workshop. When I lived in Norfolk, VA, I attended classes at The Muse Writers Center. There are many other writing centers across the country (and internationally) such as The Loft in Minneapolis, Grub Street in Boston, Hugo House in Seattle, and The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.
If a Google search doesn’t turn up one near you, many offer online classes as well, especially in this post-2020 world. However, in my experience, community is easier to form and far stronger to maintain when created in person. If it’s at all possible, having real life connections can make a tremendous difference.
I took several classes at The Muse: meditation, poetry, flash fiction, and more, until settling into an ongoing fiction workshop. We would present several pages at a time for critique, and that was how I initially started writing more consistently. Until then, I’d just scribbled poems in notebooks and wrote pieces of stories that I never finished.
Taking part in a regular local workshop led me to apply to longer writing workshops, which required travel and a commitment of money and time like Hurston Wright and VONA/Voices. Here I met writers like Daniel José Older, Rebecca Roanhorse, Kacen Callender, and more, who were also at the very start of their careers.
After returning home from these workshops, some of my classmates kept in touch via online groups. Those of us in the Washington, DC area met up in person from time to time, and this is how my first mastermind group was born.
One of the first things we did was to form a book club and read some of the recommended books that our writing instructor had mentioned. Then we formed a NaNoWriMo accountability group and began writing online several days a week during the writing challenge. That was the first year I won Nano!
That accountability group morphed into a mastermind group as several of us began planning to self-publish our first novels.
We wanted to share what we were learning about the daunting process and help each other along the path.
Around this time, I also joined Maryland Romance Writers (MRW) and Romance Writers of America (RWA) based on the positive experiences of one of my VONA writing workshop instructors. I began attending meetings regularly and found a lot of inspiration from sitting next to successful, business-smart authors who lived a few towns over.
MRW offers critique groups as a benefit of membership, and I joined one of those as well. I received great feedback on the manuscript I was working on Song of Blood & Stone, my first novel.
These different experiences with writers in a variety of genres and career levels were formative. They shaped my knowledge of craft, made me a better writer, helped shine a light on my blind spots, gave me people to commiserate with, and folks to support me along the way.
So if you’re looking for a group or community, my recommendations are:
Join a local writing group associated with your region or genre
Take a class in person or online
Attend a writing conference
Join a book club (writers read)
Check with your local library or independent bookstore
Look on Meetup.com
Post on social media using writing hashtags like #amwriting or #writingcommunity
Join an online group on Facebook, Discord, or a writing forum
Check out local chapters of larger groups (e.g. Sisters in Crime, SCBWI, etc.)
If you have additional tips or ideas, please add them in the comments!
Forming Your Own Group
So, you’ve found some groups or organizations, but you’re not getting exactly what you want. Or you’ve met some cool people who you’d like to work with more, away from the crowd. In that case, forming your own group may just be the way to go. Here are some suggestions.
Define Your Goals & Purpose
As I mentioned, I’ve been in groups specifically to help me sit in this chair with my hands on the keyboard and get the words written. (I’m still in one of these groups as it happens, over 14 books later). I’ve also been in groups with the purpose of critiquing my writing. These are not the same group. My mastermind partners may give me feedback, but that’s also not the purpose of that group. So figure out what you need and what you want these people to get together and do.
I’d suggest a single purpose. If you’re having trouble finishing your novel, then find some accountability partners. Want more confidence about your writing craft? Go the critique route. If you want recommendations for editors and cover designers, maybe there’s another group for that. But be clear on what the expectations are and what you all are doing.
Get the Right People
This is probably the hardest part. Depending on your personality, it may be very difficult to wrangle that one Chatty Kathy who always derails the conversation. Or the Negative Norman who brings the whole vibe down with his complaining. Then there’s Do-anything-but-write Dora and I’m-just-trying-to-get-away-from-my-kids Iyesha. These people will sap your energy and poison your group. They may be perfectly nice, but if three of you are there for business and one is there because her husband gets on her nerves, you may just have a problem.
With a new group, I recommend starting out, or adding new members, on a trial basis. Maybe give it three meetings. Or four months. Something time-based that is long enough for you to determine if you are a good fit. After that, you can go your separate ways and perhaps re-form without the dead weight.
There will always be the possibility of hurt feelings, and though these groups are inevitably part social, they are also mostly professional. Treating them that way from the beginning is wise. After a while, these folks may become your best friends. Or maybe they stay colleagues. Either way works.
Schedule, Meet, Evaluate & Repeat
After you have your why and your who, it’s time to get down to business. Maybe you meet at the library, the coffee shop, or the Wegmans cafe. Or over Zoom or Discord. Get your timing and methodology together and then ensure you are all on the same page as to what’s going to happen here. Miscommunications are common, so consider getting down on paper the purpose and format of your meetings.
Do you need a timer to ensure folks aren’t sucking up all the air in the room? An anonymous evaluation at the end to share thoughts? A mission statement that is read at every meeting? You get to decide how to ensure you’re all there to do what you aim to do.
Sometimes a secondary group will break off from the primary group. Maybe your sprinting group is multi-genre, and the three horror writers decide to get together separately to critique. Or you attend a retreat and then email the writers you ended up having lunch with every day, asking if they want to be accountability partners. And thus a group is born!
I hope this has given you some ideas for joining or forming your own group. And guess what? I’m starting a little sub-group of my own! It’s a book club for craft books and more info will be coming to your inboxes tomorrow! Make sure you’re subscribed!
Please leave a comment with your writing group experiences! Where did you find yours? Have you found it beneficial?