Popular tropes often describe us writers as introverted and shy nerds, plying their craft in solitude in a dingy apartment, or sometimes in a cottage in southern France.[1] As usual, this stereotype widely misses the mark for the large majority of writers, myself included. What’s definitely true, though, is that the act of writing itself is largely a solitary effort. A “simple” thing like revising a 6k word short story, which I did last weekend, meant basically shutting myself off from my family and the world for two days.[2]
Writing (usually) isn’t a performative form of art, where feedback is more or less automatic. But we still need feedback to improve, in our craft in general, and each story in particular. In addition, the saying “no one is an island” is very true. Imposter syndrome is a thing, even for outwardly confident people. Receiving emotional support, confirmation, encouragement, and accountability is important for us as writers, and human beings.
Which is where writing communities come in, as a possible answer to all of the above. The following is my personal view, and journey; if you have other experiences to share, feel free to leave a comment.
Back when I first started writing, in the aughts [3], it was just for my family. Then in 2009, I learned of National Novel Writing Month, where you write a novel in the month of November, 50k words or more. Voilà, a big community of writers, and I mean BIG! More than 100k people at the time. There were forums, and local face-to-face events, none of which I used. The key thing for me was the accountability: entering my word count on the website every day, for the world to see. Even if no one else cared, it was enough to keep me engaged, and “winning” Nano was a great experience. The novel was 60k words in the end, and not very good. Didn’t matter, though — I’d written a novel, thanks to the power of community![4]
Jump to 2021. I’d taken a long break from writing, for a variety of reasons, the main ones being time, and the feeling that I needed to focus on the wordsmithing part of the craft before I could do the storytelling part full justice. This time, I took prep for the November novel more seriously; while in 2009 I had decided on October 30th that I’d do Nano with nothing but a vague idea of a hook, and no plot, 2021 saw me with something akin to an outline. Just a five sentence one, inciting incident, the three disasters and the resolution; still, enough to give me guide rails for a much more structured, and better story. (That’s the novel I’m currently querying.)
The prep also included taking the actual community part more seriously than just typing word count into an online tracker. We had moved to France by now, and the French Nano forums were even less suited to my needs that the German ones had been, given that I wrote in English. Fortunately, most of the interesting stuff happened on Discord, a free group chat app where anyone can set up a server with channels, and many of the local Nano MLs (Municipal Liasons) had done just that for their local communities. Looking to England, I found a lovely group not connected to a particular city or area, called “England’s Elsewherians”, full of wonderful people who welcomed me with open arms. It was the first time I experienced “real” writing community – discussing wordings with questions and answers in real time, participating in sprints (short, timed sessions where everyone just goes for speedy word count, with chat breaks in between), or just having aimless group chats with fellow writers in between the actual writing. Our ML was (and still is) the best; they and the writers built the Elsewherians into an inclusive community that really helped push me forward.
It wasn’t enough, though. Even though I almost always found someone willing to critique a short story when I asked for it, I needed more systematic feedback. Besides, being more prolific at the time than most, I felt bad asking for critiques without sufficiently giving back.
Cue writing groups.
Again, tricky when you live à la campagne in France. Fortunately, there is a largish community of British expats in my area, and I managed to find 3 other writers who were interested in regularly getting together to critique each other’s writing. None of them were as prolific as me, or looking to publish, so we ended up taking turns coming up with a writing prompt or exercise that led to short story or scene that we could discuss when we met every 3 to 4 weeks.
It was lots of fun, and quite useful, albeit not quite what I needed. While all group members were good enough writers per se, none of the others regularly read SFF, particularly fantasy, and that turned out to make critiquing my stories difficult. When writing genre, you have to assume that your readers will know the common tropes; just like people have a mental image when I say “London” or “Paris” in a story, the same should hold true for “orc” or “cantrip” (or “worm hole” in SF). Jo Walton wrote a great blog post on Tor.com on why that’s a problem for an SFF writer (she calls it the missing SF reading protocols). It’s even more pronounced in a critique group.[5]
As so often in life, serendipity provided the solution. Besides the Elsewherians, I had in the meantime joined a global community of Nano-related writers, the Writers’ Coffeehouse.[6] There, one of the more active people (also an ML) asked me whether I wanted to join their smaller group, who, incidentally, met online once a week for a critique group. US-based, fantasy writers or at least readers all of them, so a much better fit.
I said yes, and there I am.
The group is great, very inclusive and supportive, and I am not only deriving a lot of value out of receiving and giving feedback, but also enjoying myself immensely. The only fly in the ointment is that I have to get up at 4 in the morning once a week, but even there they’ve been accommodating, moving the time slot back an hour to better suit my needs, even though I’m the only non-USian. (3 a.m. was tough.)
There is a lot more on the topic I could say, but the post is already long, so wrapping up:
- If you are looking for a writing community, there are many out there, and one of them is likely to be able to fill your personal needs. A quick internet search will turn up tons.
- When you start, consider some basic needs. For me, Discord is great with its mix of synchronous and asynchronous. Need an immediate answer to a question how to word something? Check. An accountability buddy to write every day? Check. Just some general feedback, no matter when? Also check. On the other hand, if you just need asynchronous, consider Reddit. If you are just looking for writing resources, consider Medium, or sites like Janice Hardy’s or K.M. Weiland‘s.
- Joining, and even more importantly, participating in a community will also help you discover your writing needs — it did for me. For example, I found that sprints aren’t really my thing — I don’t type fast and prefer to keep my inner editor turned on when writing, saving myself time later. The group aspect here is more of a distraction; I’d rather chat when I’m done, otherwise I just procrastinate.
- Once you’ve found your sea legs as a writer, join a writing group. On one hand, you’ll need the feedback, on the other, critically reading what others have written will hone the ability to read your own works with “editor” eyes to spot necessary changes.
- In any community you join, don’t be a jerk. That should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway; we’re on the internet, after all.
- I didn’t mention social media because a. I consider it a different topic and b. I’m not very good at it myself. If it’s something you’re likely to enjoy, you’ll probably be there already anyway.
That’s all for today, comments welcome as usual. And I’ll think I’ll keep posting on Thurdays. (*Cough*) Suits my weekly schedule better.
Notes:
[1] I can attest from own experience you don’t actually have to look like Colin Firth to write in southern France, but in that case it helps if you already live there.
[2] My family did help me brainstorm a new ending, though, and the story is now much better for it.
[3] I actually began telling stories in an organized way in 1984, when I took up DMing an AD&D group. Role playing is an intrinsically community-based activity, and game mastering arguably also writing, but I’m not counting that here. Might merit its own post at some point.
[4] The BICHOK was still all me, of course.
[5] My wife ran into the same issue in her book club when she tried to introduce SFF books as the sole SFF reader in the group. It didn’t work out.
[6] In case anyone was wondering why I hadn’t provided a link to Nano so far, this is probably the right place to mention the recent issues around the organization. If you haven’t heard of it, and do want to go down that rabbit hole, check out the summary at https://nanoscandal.com/. Suffice it to say that I consider Nanowrimo as organization proper to be deceased, but the spirit of Nano lives on in the various communities that sprang out of it, like those I mention in the text. And the MLs keeping those communities alive. You are amazing!