Writing Groups

— Mark Paxson

For the most part, writing is a very solitary experience. Which may explain why some search out writing groups. For the socialization. Also, if the group is a critique group, helpful advice can help a writer feel better about what they are working on. And, for me, there also is just the motivating factor of talking to other writers about writing. Anytime I do that, I come away with a renewed intent. I don’t always follow-up on tha renewed intent, but still … it helps to push me.

In my 20+ years of writing, I can think of the following writing groups I’ve been a part of:

• Critique Group #1
• Critique Group #2
• Writing Prompt Group
• Writing Exercise Group #1
• Writing Exercise Group #2
• Writing Conference three-day group
• WSW Video Chat Group
• Elk Grove Writers Guild

Here are the sordid details of each of those.

Critique Group #1 was a group of older men who had been in the critique group for before one of them asked me to join the group. Sure, why not, I thought. Well, let me tell you why not. They were a bunch of grumpy old men who were basically tired of each other. In particular one writer who the others would offer constructive criticism to and who would then whine about why they didn’t like his writing. I only went once or twice and the group fell apart shortly afterwards.

Critique Group #2 is a group I just joined a few weeks ago. I did so with caution because of my first experience and also because I had just been writing a lot longer and had ideas of what I want or need in critiques and what I don’t want or need. Also, the group would be mostly on-line on a forum platform with occasional zoom meetings. No in=person options. I expressed my caution upfront but decided to give it a try.

One of the things I don’t like about critique groups is that they generally involve shorter portions of longer stories. A chapter at a time. Ten pages at a time. Some portion submitted for review and critique as you spool out the entire piece. I really don’t know how to offer an effective critique of part of a piece. I also much prefer to reach an entire story before offering my own critique. How do I know if something is missing or doesn’t make sense unless I’ve read the whole thing.

So, back to critique group #2 … a group of about a half dozen people, some of whom posted pieces. Some who didn’t. The feedback I got can be broken down into two categories: (1) can’t wait to read more; and (2) feedback that suggested a much deeper, meaningful story than the one I wanted. It’s that second category that just doesn’t do anything for me. Don’t try to find meaning in what I write. Don’t try to force it on me. Maybe just read the story I’ve written, you know. But that’s the problem with these groups … you don’t get the entire piece so you just kind of make things up and assume things as you go along.

I let the organizer of this group know yesterday that I was done. That it wasn’t working for me, through no fault of anybody. It’s just not what works for me.

Writing Prompt Group — when the pandemic started and I was recently retired, I joined a weekly prompt group. At the time they met entirely by zoom. The sessions start with a prompt. Everybody writes to that prompt for 20-30 minutes and then they take turns reading what they’ve written. Minor feedback, always positive, is provided. I tried one of the zoom sessions, but found it less than ideal. I’ve become every more distractible and I just couldn’t maintain my focus during those sessions. So I rarely participated, although occasionally I’d write to the prompt and email it to the group. Some of those efforts have led to short stories.

Writing Exercise Group #1 — this was a group led by Zoe Keithley, a wonderful woman who had attending the writing program at Columbia College in Chicago. She used her experience there to inform her writing workshops. We’d meet once a month for four hours. The sessions would start off with various types of exercises. An example: close your eyes and identify a sound you hear and then describe it. Another: close your eyes and then open them and look around the room and find something in the room and describe it. All of these exercises were designed to get us to realize that there was far more going on in a scene than we might first realize.

The sessions always ended with a series of exercises in which we would imagine a scene and start placing things in it. A person, a smell, a sound, an object, an object that didn’t belong, and so on. And then we would spend 20-30 minutes writing something that occurs in that scene or any other thing we wanted to write. And then we would each read what we wrote and offer feedback, always and only positive feedback.

I participated in Zoe’s workshops for several years. And just in case you’re interested, if you ever want to read what I consider to be one of the best examples of literary fiction I’ve ever read, check out her novel, The Calling of Mother Adelli.

The second writing exercise group was led by Donna Hamelin. We had a series of similar sessions, but with different types of exercises. One I remember was to write for five minutes about a place, then five minutes about a person at that place, and then five minutes about something that happens at that place. I wrote about a church on a hill, with an old priest standing in the doorway, and a stranger who comes to talk to the priest.

I captured a rhythm in what I wrote that day, but I was working on something else, so I put the handwritten pages away. When I went back to try to move the story along, I couldn’t find those pages. Over the next year, I looked a couple more times and still couldn’t find them. I tried to rewrite it from my memory but felt I had lost the vibe. Then, more than a year later, I looked again, and I found the pages and that idea became my second completed novel. A story that I consider one of my best.

And that’s the thing about those writing exercise groups. To the extent that any of these groups have done anything for me as a writer, these exercise groups did it. A lot of exercises with Zoe led to critical pieces in my third novel, The Dime. Without her group, it’s very possible I never would have written that book and, if I had, it would have been much weaker. I would love to find another group like this, but it is so important to find the right leader and the right group of writers. I’m not sure if I’ll ever find that.

The next best group I was in was at the Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference. I don’t remeber what year I went, but it must have been at least a dozen years ago. The conference is a three day event in Fort Bragg. In the mornings, participants sign up for different “courses” that last the entire three days. In the afternoons, different sessions are held each day. I signed up for a fiction writing group. Twelve writers who had to submit up to 10 pages of material and be accepted into the group. Peter Orner, who writes literary fiction and has a number of books to his credit, led the group. Each morning, we would offer critique to four of the pieces that were submitted.

It was an interesting group. One writer critiqued that nothing the others submitted had any emotion to it, and when I read his piece, I really wanted to know where the emotion was. Another writer’s common criticism was that there were too many things left unanswered or unexplained. To which I wanted to respond, “it’s only a snippet and, besides, how ’bout you use your imagination.”

But it was a very good experience and a positive one. I submitted the first ten pages of what would eventually become The Dime, what I thought would be it. A short story. But after the comments I received, I decided there was definitely more story to tell and over the next few years, with a lot of help from Zoe’s workshop, I was able to extend it to a novel that I’m pretty proud of.

Our Video Chat group also qualifies as a writers group. I mean we’re all writers and we talk about writing. I enjoy our conversations and I always leave them wanting to continue on as a writer and figure these things out that we discuss and that befuddle me at times. One of the things I like about it is that we don’t share our writing, we don’t read each other’s writing. We just talk about writing, so it’s different than all of those other groups I discuss above.

Finally, the Elk Grove Writer’s Guild. I joined this three or four years ago after seeing them at an arts festival. There is a monthly lunch, and the guild puts on conferences and workshops and also makes appearances at arts festivals and book fairs.

The monthly lunches are typically attended by 10-15 members. We spend most of the time with each writer talking about what they’re working on, progress they’ve made, whatever updates they may have. Again, it’s good to engage with other writers. It helps keep me motivated. But some aspects of this group are starting to wear thin for me. The biggest is that some of the members seem a bit too lackadaisical about the threat of AI. It really bothers me that they are willing to have AI do things for them as they write their stories. But beyond that, the benefits of the conversation outweigh that drawback.

There may be some other “groups” I’ve forgotten about, but I think that’s it. I wonder what would make for a good critique group, or if maybe I’m just not the right person for a critique group. I’d love to find another writing exercise group like what Zoe did, but don’t know where to start. And I’ll keep talking to the WSW group as long as we come up with topics to cover.

What about you? Are you a solo writer or do you look for engagement with other writers in any settings like I’ve described? If you have, what works best for you? What type of engagement do you look for? What doesn’t work?