Auditioning Writers’ Groups

I’m auditioning for a new writer’s group. Does anyone have any openings?

Over the last year, my old group has fallen apart. We’d been meeting for several years, and I’ve been struggling to put my finger on what happened. I keep looking around at long-term groups I know.

Those groups seem like people who have been happily married for twenty years. People who support each other through the ups and downs. People who can disagree with passion and still be friends. They seem to be able to hold one another accountable without hurting each other’s feelings. In fact, it seems that the egos get set aside. At least from the outside looking in. 

I admit that I’m envious. 

True to my nerd nature, I’ve been trying to figure out why some groups stick together for a long time and why some don’t. I’m looking for the magic formula, the secret handshake. I see three commonalities: discipline, craft, and caring. 

By discipline, I mean treating your writing as more than something you do just when you have time. I’m not judging because I know that it’s hard to juggle everything in life. For years I was one of those people that sporadically dribbled out a few words at a time, and I’m still not as disciplined about a writing routine as I could be. That said, when too many people in a group that’s focused on giving feedback show up time after time without having written anything, things fall apart. 

Over the last year, more often than not in my last group, I was the only person with pages to share. Obviously, groups that get together specifically to write rather than give feedback don’t have that problem. But I think getting feedback from other writers is important. While everyone got along and we liked one another, the group drifted apart because we didn’t have enough in common outside of writing to hold us together.

It sounds snobbish when I say that craft is an important factor (look at my shiny MFA!). It’s ridiculous to think everyone has to have a degree in writing to be able to write well. Understanding craft is important no matter how you get that knowledge. When I give feedback, I try to drill down into why something works or doesn’t work so the feedback is specific and ‘actionable’. 

I want the people that give me feedback to do the same. For me, hearing ‘that was good’ isn’t helpful even though it’s nice when people like your work. It would be lovely if someone recognized in my current WIP that the objective correlative is women’s wigs. Or would understand what I mean when I say that. Or could point out when a scene lacked emotion or the emotion was not consistent with the character or what was happening in the scene. Or could discuss the use of detail to show the character’s personality. Or, or, or . . . 

There are plenty of resources for learning about craft. I don’t want to be the only one in the room that thinks that learning the basics and then continuing to reflect on and consciously apply those basics is important.

The caring part comes from genuinely wanting others to succeed and not seeing each other as competitors. There’s an abundance mentality where they recognize that one person’s success doesn’t come at the expense of another person’s. Caring also means respecting one another and not thinking that because one person is published (or has a shiny MFA) that they’re more knowledgable about your story than you are. 

A couple of the groups I’ve been studying from afar came together during their college years when forming these kinds of relationships happens organically. I was incredibly neurotic during my MFA program and scared people away. I hate to think that those of us that missed that boat during graduate school are out of luck. 

I’ll keep looking because my middle name is persistence. So if you’re in a writing group that’s floating around in my orbit, I may come around like an orphan looking for shelter. Please be kind if I knock on your door.