Writers' Groups
A young friend of mine is trying to start a writers' group in our area, and it got me to thinking about them. I've only been involved with three writers' groups over the many years I've been writing, and all three of them have been very different.
The first one was the Charlotte Writers' Club. I lived 30 miles away from where they met, so that was the biggest obstacle to it. In addition, even back then, it was a big group that held good programs but gave little individualization. I did manage to win two awards for writing submissions, so that was encouraging.
The next one was the best in my opinion. It was started by Ruth Moose, who later moved to Chapel Hill to teach creative writing at the University of North Carolina. She hand selected the participants, and there were only five of us. All were serious about writing. We basically critiqued each other's work during the meetings. This came early in my writing career, and I learned so much from these women.
I organized the last one. I advertised and pulled in around a dozen interested people. Joyce and Jim Lavene, who have published about a hundred novels, were a big asset to the group. I felt the problem with this one was that we were all so diverse. There were all levels of writers from beginners to professionals and many different genre interests. This seemed to fragment the group and make it more difficult to meet the needs of individuals. It remained relatively strong, however, until I moved, because my husband accepted a church to pastor 4 1/2 hours away. After I left, it folded.
I think writers' groups can be helpful, but not all of them are. It is hard to organize to meet the needs of all members but not impossible. From my experience, I think a small homogeneous grouping works best, but each writer should choose according to what works best for them. Writers, as much as any other group I know, tend to be independent people, and perhaps this self-sufficiency makes grouping writers more difficult.
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I'm glad you posted about your various writers' groups. I've been looking for one in my area and had thought about The Charlotte Writers' Club. I started a group about 8 years ago and we met for about a year. I experienced some of the same issues you did. What I was aiming for was a group of serious writers who wanted to move forward with an actual writing career. What I got was mainly folks who were considering writing, but hadn't committed to it yet and definitely weren't on the same plane I was on at the time. Also, some wanted to turn it into a Bible study. I love studying the Bible, but I was involved in enough of those already and really wanted this group to be open to anyone who was serious about writing. In the end, I found it too hard to get regular commitment from people and it wasn't the best use of my time.
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