Writing Groups.

Putting Cynthia and her stumbling progress through life aside for a moment, I want to ask you if you belong to a writing group?

Is it a group you make time to attend or is it a group you just pay membership dues to each year thinking you will take part, one day soon?
What do you hope to receive from this group and what do you intend to give in return?
Lots of questions we should ask ourselves each time we contact other writers.
Do you leave the meetings coming away feeling invigorated or flat?

Finding the right group is hard.
Each one contains strong personalities and even stronger egos which overtly and sometimes covertly drive them.

I have belonged to a few over the many years I've been writing and I have been saddened to see shy and diffident writers buckle under criticisms aimed at them and their writing by others.
Trying to find your own voice and genre can take many years and others forcing their opinions upon you will lengthen that time.
Most writers need mentors from time to time, but if you leave a meeting feeling intimidated by someone ...and there is often a show-off in the group who will be quick to voice his/her opinion down your throat if the convener of the meeting doesn't have enough control.... then take heart, you won't be alone.


I have a theory, which I think is becoming a neurosis, that the poets of some of the groups I belong to are taking over and trying to force the short story writers and freelance writers into feeling inferior.
Heaven help anyone who might wish to write romantic stories, humour, general freelance articles for magazines or any other genre that doesn't appeal to the high minded elitist market.
They are doomed to sit under a rock of disdain forever unless they find or form their own writing group.

If you are feeling a bit low thank your stars you live in a time of digital wonders because there are places, colleagues and friends out there everywhere, you just have to go searching. Some of my best mates are people I have only known because of my computer but that is the writer's life. It has always been an isolated one.

It is fine for people to be poets, but in Australia I defy anyone to make half a living let alone a good one by being a poet......unless you teach it of course. What is the old saying? If you can't do it teach it? That's probably a bit unfair but it does give them a position of advantage to get their work in front of many more people. They teach it therefore they know it all ?Not in my book.
For the young people wanting to make a decent living from writing many start at the local education centres where they take writing and editing courses, or maybe even take a journalism degree.. That's fine, but do they get taught about the business side of writing? Are they told about the hard nosed competitive and plain bitchy world they might encounter when they eventually get that job? I don't think they are.
At least in the bad old days when you were a cub reporter you learned from the start what was ahead of you.
It's a little like the nurses who learn all the theory and are then, when they enter a ward for the first time, are shocked by the smell of bed pans and the sight of the first 'wino' brought in on a stretcher covered in lice and they have to undress, wash and clean him up while he has a fit of the D.T's
O.K I'm getting wound up now, so I'll stop.
My advice is find the right group for you or go it alone with the help you can get from the Internet.

The only criticism you should listen to is when it comes from a writer you really respect. That is all that matters, ignore the rest.
Liz T.
(C)