How to Start a Writing Group
So You Never Have to Be Alone With Your Thoughts
I’m just kidding! Being alone with your thoughts is great. Writers spend a lot of time alone with our own thoughts, which is how we become writers. Probably people become writers a lot of other ways, too. All roads lead to writing a novel, apparently.
Writing by nature is a solitary practice. It is the act of taking words from your head and putting them down in a fixed form and this requires absolutely nothing and no one but the writer themself and some means to fix words in a preserving medium, like a piece of paper, a word processing document, or an audio file.
That said, I believe nothing amazing has ever been produced in a vacuum. There are very few books worth reading that could be characterized as solo efforts. Most manuscripts undergo some type of collaborative processing before they reach readers’ hands. In traditional publishing this may mean the aid of an agent, an editor, and production services. For many self-publishing authors this means the assistance of beta readers and paid editorial service providers like a copyeditor or a proofreader.
It’s true that some books are truly the singular effort of one person: A writer has written every word and received no revising, editing, or publishing help from anyone. Whether these books are worth it for anyone else to read, is debatable. I don’t believe I’ve encountered one.
All this to say, if you’re hanging onto the idea that a real writer works alone and that if you were a real or a good writer you would not need collaboration from anyone to turn out an excellent work—disabuse yourself. This is simply untrue. If you walk into a Barnes & Noble or a Books a Million or walk by the book section in a Target, Walmart, or Costco, every book you see there is the collaborative effort of a team of people. Not one of those books was made by one person alone.
There are lots of ways to collaborate on writing and one of them is by joining or starting a writing group. Personally, I haven’t had luck joining an existing writing group. I have rarely found groups that fit the bill of what I’m looking for and, when I have, they haven’t been taking new members or my inquiries turned up no response. On the other hand, I’ve had excellent luck with starting a writing group, so the wisdom from that is what I’m going to pass on today.
The writing group I currently participate in started around 2016 or 2017, I can’t remember now, at a housewarming party for the place I lived at before where I live now. When I say “I started a writing group,” that’s not precisely true. It’s more like it started by mutual agreement. Three of my guests and I were talking about how we all wished we were in a writing group and then one of my guests said, “This is enough people for a writing group, let’s meet back here next Sunday and be a writing group.” So we did. It was hosted sometimes at my place and sometimes elsewhere. It’s been going on and off since then with members leaving and joining. We’ve been through a few different formats and seen what works well and what works less well.
Virtual or In Person?
Writing groups of all types can work equally well online as in person. When I was in college and taking creative writing courses, everyone had to bring a stack of their manuscript to class each week and hand them out, one copy for each classmate (plus one for yourself and one for the professor). Today there’s no need to be in person to hand out stapled, twelve-point Times double spaced manuscripts. There are tons of options for virtual meetings. Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams are all well-known and user-friendly, but their free feature sets have some limitations—notably, a limited meeting time (40 minutes for Zoom and 60 minutes for Meet and Teams). Skype is a good option for free conferencing as the time limit is much longer (24 hours). Discord, which started as a voice chat tool for the online gaming community, offers free video chatting and has other community-building features that make it a good choice for someone who has the time to learn the software.
If you’re meeting in person, decide whether you or another member will host at your home, whether meetings will rotate through members’ homes, or whether you’ll meet at a public place like a library or coffee shop.
The big pro of meeting virtually is that you can include members who aren’t in the same geographical region as the host, allowing you to cast a wider net for participants. A big pro of in-person meeting is enjoying snacks or drinks together.
My writing group meets approximately twice monthly on alternating Sundays: An in-person session hosted at my home, followed by a virtual session two weeks later, followed by an in-person session two weeks later, and so on. This way I get the best of both worlds; the folks who join for the virtual session are all over the country and the in-person session has snacks.
Pick Your Format
There’s more than one kind of writing group. Over the years, my writing group has been three different kinds at different times:
Critique group
Write-together group
Accountability group
A critique group is one in which members share their work ahead of the scheduled meeting for discussion during the meeting. Members read each others’ work before the meeting and may add comments electronically to a shared document or annotate their own copy. During the meeting, members share their feedback on the manuscripts that were submitted for discussion in that meeting.
In a critique group format, it’s wise to set guidelines for how far in advance work must be shared to be considered for the group in order to be respectful of everyone’s time. You may also consider setting a limit on volume of content per writer per meeting (for instance, one chapter/one story; 10 pages; 3000 words) to make sure everyone has a chance to share content and receive feedback.
In practice, my small writing group found we didn’t write enough between meetings to have a meaningful discussion each session. The pace was a bit much and members felt pressured to come up with something new for each meeting—so we changed to a write-together group.
A write-together group meets and writes quietly together. My group follows a format similar to this (it’s also part accountability group) and our format is to meet, greet, get snacks, and then settle in for writing sprints: Twenty-five minutes writing followed by a quick, five-minute check-in. Before starting the first sprint, each member speaks about what they’re going to be writing and what they hope to accomplish in group that day. During the brief check-ins between sprints, we report how we’re doing making progress toward the intention. (That’s the accountability piece.)
An accountability group is one in which members meet to discuss their writing practice, progress, and goals. Members discuss with each other what their writing goals are and how they’re progressing toward those goals. Meeting regularly to discuss progress will, in theory, motivate members between sessions to keep working toward their goals. Everyone’s goals in a writing accountability group will be writing-related but may not directly be goals to write a certain amount. For instance, members may have goals to revise or edit something they’ve written, to query agents or submit work to magazines, to improve their writing pace, and so on.
Keep in mind, your writing group need not be only one of these types. For instance, you can be a critique group when someone has a new manuscript to share and a write-together group otherwise. Likewise, my group is a mix of writing together and accountability.
Figure Out Your Frequency
Format can help inform frequency, as I alluded above, which is why I suggest selecting your format first. A critique group may not have materials to meet as often as a write-together group. Likewise, a write-together group probably needs a longer session time than an accountability group.
Be realistic about the frequency you can sustain if you’re leading the effort. If you’re going to host in your home, how often do you realistically have the resources to do that? When and how often do you have a multi-hour block of time you can devote? Once a month seems like a good frequency for my in-person writing group. It’s rewarding to see my friends in person, but the virtual session is much easier to host. I don’t have to tidy up, I don’t have to warn my partner in advance that people are coming over, I don’t have to shop for and prepare snacks. You might be able to realistically host a virtual group more often than an in-person group.
My group found that every two weeks was too frequent—many members couldn’t set aside that much time. Once a month is about perfect for most of the members. I have more writing time than that, but then I’m the only one who attends both the in-person and the virtual session (since I host) so that works out well for me.
Find Some Members
This part is legitimately hard. People are busy. People are unreliable. People may be gung ho to join and then never show up after the first meeting. Collecting a core group of members who join your group and stick with it is challenging but rewarding.
First, consider whether you want to look for members who write the same kind of stuff as you do, or whether you want to meet with all types of writers. If you’re looking to meet with only short story writers who only write sf/f and only those who have been doing it for at least five years, you’re going to realistically have a smaller member pool than if you’re open to everybody. It may be harder to fill the group.
Consider whether you’re open to:
All writing formats—novels, short stories, poems, screenplays, plays, blog posts, and others? Or only one or a few?
Both fiction and nonfiction? Or only one or the other? What about creative nonfiction (like memoir) versus other type of nonfiction?
All genres? Or only a specific genre or genres?
All levels of writing experience? If not, how will you determine who has the appropriate writing experience to join?
Once you know who you’re looking for, start with your circle of friends and acquaintances and work outward. If you use social media, make a post for your friends to see if anyone’s interested. Ask your work friends if anyone writes as a hobby or a side hustle. If you find friends to join, see if they have friends who might like to join. If you’re open to anyone at all joining your group, even if you don’t know them personally, consider posting the group on a site like Meetup or Facebook Events.
Set Up Digital Resources
Finally, make sure you have the digital resources ready to keep your group organized. This may include things like a Discord server as mentioned above, or a Zoom account, but also:
A digital calendar invitation that includes the time, location or URL, and other meeting details like an agenda.
A Google Drive or DropBox to which members can upload their materials for review by other members and receive feedback.
A Padlet where you and other group members can collaboratively share resources and files to present during group meetings (thanks to my friend Rebekka for introducing me to Padlet!)
A virtual place for members to chat between meetings, such as a Discord server, Slack, or Facebook Group.
I’ve had a truly excellent experience with my writing group and I look forward to working with them for—hopefully!—years to come. If a writing group sounds appealing to you but you can’t find one to join, I hope I’ve shared a useful foundation today for starting your own.
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