Once you figure out what your passion is, surround yourself with like-minded people who can help you grow.
Jessica St. Clair, actress and comedian
This feels like a deeply philosophical entry this week, because finding your people can be applied to your life generally, but I believe it’s most important when it comes to being creative. If you’re a young writer starting out or an older writer working away at your opus, finding a writing group to share your work with can you help develop your skills and confidence.
But, of course, it’s got to be the right people.
Below are some practical tips to help you find and form a writing group that will be “your kind of people.”
Finding Your People
“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on.” – Albert Einstein
When I was growing up, being creative was considered a little weird, and even though I wrote poems from a very young age, it was never looked on as a serious pursuit. It wasn’t until I stumbled onto my writing group (shout out to MSWG) that I began to take my writing more seriously and etch out regular writing time in my busy life. And it all happened quite by accident; after I mentioned to a friend from work that I wrote short stories and novels, she suggested I join a group she was involved in.
And that’s probably the biggest and best tip:
Talk about it
You don’t need to drop it into every conversation, but talking about it amongst your friends can lead you to a writing group that will likely be close to you geographically and in philosophy. Some schools have groups already set up, and if you’re at university studying the arts in some form, there’s bound to be a writing group or three floating around, but it’s important to speak up to find the right people.
If you can’t seem to find one then, create a writing group yourself.
As above, signing up for writing courses will help you find a group of people who are interested in writing and sharing their work, but from whatever source you find your writing group, be prepared to be the driving force behind the group, at least until it’s been running for a while. People will expect you to organise meetings, who’s reading what and find the venue as well. These days this is pretty easy by using a group message app like WhatsApp or Messenger, and you can set yourself a calendar reminder in your phone to prompt you to message about the meeting. It doesn’t take a lot of work, but you should have an enjoyment for organising. If you don’t, then I suggest you either split the work or find someone in the group who has that natural bent.
Organise regular meetings
The size of the group will depend on how often you meet, but I’d suggest for a group of 6 or less you should probably meet up once a month. This gives people time to write and submit, plus it gives you a chance to have a life outside of writing! If the group is larger, or you do want to meet up more regularly, then I suggest splitting up the organising amongst a few of you, and you each take turns sorting the meetings and the venue. Using some form of group messaging is definitely the way to go, so everyone can read and respond in one spot, and it’s easier to spread the organising among a few of you.
Manage the group’s size and expectations
Having a large group of ten or more people can often mean that some people’s voices and work get lost by, what we’ll call, the “more creative” and “noisier” people, so managing the size and expectation of how often people will get to submit their work is really important.
If you’ve started your writing group from a writing course, then you’ll invariably start with a large number of people, and as the months go by you’ll see numbers drop off as life gets in the way of the writiing group for some people. Those first few months need careful management to ensure everyone feels included and has a chance to submit something and give feedback. You could decide to have more regular meetings, say every fortnight, but I think you should also create a roster of who’s expected to submit and who’s expected to give feedback at each meeting. That way everyone is getting a chance to show off their work and have their voice work. It will also mean the more dominant members won’t completely take over the group and make it all about them.
Another solution with a larger group is splitting into different writing groups and run them simultaneously. That way, people still get to submit and give feedback every time, and it may help to keep people coming along if they get to have a voice more. It also means that people can move between the groups to get a taste of everyone’s writing and find a group that suits them best. But to do this well, you’ll obviously need a co-organiser(s) to run the group who has a similar attitude towards how the group should be run, which brings me to…
Ground rules
It’s important that you set up what sort of group you’re going to be from the start and make sure people know what to expect. This includes how often meetings are, if there’s a roster for who’s going to submit and who gives feedback, but most importantly, the type of feedback you’re going to give. There are lots of different ways to give feedback to people’s work, but I think it’s important to at least employ the constructive criticism technique, giving 2 positive to 1 negative feedback. In a situation where someone begins to go into lengthy feedback that feels quite negative, I suggest interrupting and putting a more positive spin on it without actually calling them out. After all, this group is here to encourage people to write, not to break them down and destroy their love of the creative process.
This is also why I’m not a great believer in a technique developed post World War 2 by a writing group comprising of ex soldiers. Used in a few US colleges and universities in other parts of the world, the technique is only give negative feedback and to basically tear the work apart to make it better. As someone who’s worked in the creative industry for over 20 years(!), I find people take criticism better when it’s tempered with positive feedback. It puts people at ease, they are generally less defensive and more open to the feedback, plus it gives them more energy and enthusiasm for what they’re doing, because it seems fixable. It keeps the love of creative writing alive, and that’s the most important thing you want out of this writing group.
MSWG’s rules are very simple but effective:
- Rule 1: Give only compliments
and - Rule 2: There is no rule 2, except you must accept the compliments
For our group, which is made up of people with different styles and experience, it creates a safe space for people to share their work, and I always leave my writing group session invigorated and with new ideas to continue on my writing journey.
Which leads me to…
Variety is the spice of life
Don’t be afraid to have writers of different genre and styles in your group.; it will widen your reading and improve your work. When I joined MSWG, they had no idea I was an erotic horror fantasy writer, and yet they were welcoming and put me at my ease. Everyone in our group has different styles of writing and most definitely very different genre, but it makes reading the submissions a real pleasure as each piece is so different. It’s also given me new ideas on how to approach my writing – I’m very much a dialogue driven writer, and yet some of the work I read contains almost no dialogue, and it has made me think more critically about how I write. Plus, everyone has a different workflow, and you’ll be exposed to a variety of books, both fictional and on writing techniques, that will expand your writing knowledge and expertise.
Summary Time!
These are simple tips to creating and maintaining a writing group, but always remember to enjoy the experience of sharing your work and reading other people’s writing, and to spread that joy amongst your group. It’s like being a part of an exclusive club, reading extracts and pieces from other writers that the rest of the world know nothing about, and sometimes before they even hit the printing press, so revel in that!
AND….
Tomorrow I’ll be putting up my first Four Week Flash Fiction Challenge!
We’ll all have a week to write 350 words based on the challenge’s criteria, and then next week we can share them. I’ll post mine up, and if you want me to read your work, feel free to pop a link into the comments section of my FWFC!
Can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!
creative schtick 