online writers group

online writers group

The Benefits and Strategies of Joining an Online Writers Group

1. Introduction to Online Writers Groups

A good writing group fosters an environment of respect, understanding, and constructive criticism. It can inspire you to take both yourself and your work seriously. It can boost your confidence by giving you positive feedback and offering you suggestions on ways to improve your writing. It can give you a sense of solidarity in your writing by connecting you with other people who know both the joy and the struggle of being a writer.

An online writers group offers many benefits to both new and experienced writers. If you are someone who is serious about writing as a career, you will need to improve your craft through practice, experimentation, and feedback. An online writing group is a good way to get that practice, that experimentation, and that feedback. It used to be that established writers had their own groups that they worked with or taught and learned from. With the explosion of the Internet, that opportunity to expand your knowledge base and skill base has come to all of us, if we are willing to take advantage of it and put in the effort needed to utilize it effectively.

2. Advantages of Participating in an Online Writers Group

For those who live far from metropolitan areas or who cannot easily find writers groups in their local areas. Convenience. Check your mailbox for messages when you want. Overcome isolation. Though writers often need a degree of isolation to do their best work, they also thrive with the companionship, feedback and mutual support provided by other writers who are facing many of the same struggles. Overcome the how-dare-I-say-that-or-write-that? syndrome which so often attacks writers in the solitude of their garret. One can try anything out on the group.

The readers are writers too, and their judgment is often keen and perceptive. Also, people with whom one has developed friendly relations are likely to give helpful and cogent criticism. They may know the writer’s work very well and be both tough and encouraging. The Internet has made connecting with other writers a snap. Following are some advantages to participating in an online writers group: Synergy. The group becomes greater than the sum of its parts. A group with a positive composition of talent and skills can be an elixir of creativity. Writers often produce their best work in a stimulating environment and the group is a major part of that environment.

3. Effective Communication and Collaboration in Online Writers Groups

Writers should post specific information that they would like to discuss during the next meeting or a subsequent session of their group in a location designed for such posts. If discussions evolve from questions, as that makes everyone potentially better and more confident writers. Focus many of your responses to other group members on their previously stated needs and expectations. Once facilitated, have a brief individual discussion about your behavior and supporting other interests, and then schedule a follow-up conversation during the writers group session. In most positive group meetings, the writer can learn much about members’ needs and communication strategies. Each writer has a unique response to a session and group members. After several meetings, compare your initial needs and expectations to the current results in other members’ needs and expectations.

Identification of needs and expectations can serve as a framework for effective communication and collaboration in online writers groups. At the outset of the group process, ranging from the first meeting to a brief survey of potential members, identify and prioritize your major creative and emotional needs and expectations for participation. Summarize these needs and expectations and share them with the group as a whole in a way that you feel comfortable communicating. Engage in specific conversations with various individual members to identify their needs and expectations. When your group is confronted with a positive or negative conflict, you will be able to address and facilitate interests verbally or through written communication and behaviors. Control minor conflicts through respectful statements and behaviors that address the issue and focus on the future. Maintain close communication with each group member. Upon reflection, consider how you may have facilitated the conflict, applied communication skills, and recognized another member’s needs and expectations.

4. Tips for Maximizing the Benefits of an Online Writers Group

Another option is to post your story in a public domain, such as a private website, on fiction-related newsgroups, or in writer’s chatrooms. You can also search online directories of bad fiction or science fiction, offering a story trade critique. Requesting private feedback can be valuable, as it often gives the most honest fact-based critiques. Even if your work is published and available in online cyber libraries, seek opinions. The general reading public can and has pointed out weaknesses I would expect a writer’s group to have identified.

3) Seeking feedback

Once you have submitted your work, it’s important to collect your critiques in a notebook or other form of permanent storage. Critiques can be very helpful not only immediately prior to a new draft but also many months later. Printouts are helpful, as different ideas can be cross-correlated more easily if they are visible at the same time. Besides, reading anything longer than 2 or 3 pages on the computer is a sure headache-fest for me. When you have received critiques for your fiction, consider discussing the critique with the critiquer if you feel that guided persuasion has greater potential than the written word. If the critique is positive but misses some important element of the story, like your story falling flat at the end, it may be productive to brainstorm this with the critic.

2) Tips for Critique Composition

When joining an online writers group, always put the quality of your work first. As in any writing group, you will be expected to provide critiques of other members’ work. The more consistently useful your critiques are, the more likely you are to get useful critiques in return. This means that you really should give only what you are capable of giving. Only critique a science fiction story if you enjoy and feel comfortable with that type of story. Don’t critique the story of someone you have nothing but disdain for. Reviews that come from the heart show the author that people are reading and thinking about their work. They encourage the author to read and comment on your work when it’s your turn to submit. On the other hand, providing very high-quality critiques for others for several months before you submit a piece for review may make everyone wonder just why you’re there. Your first submissions will then be under a great deal of pressure to live up to these superior critiques.

1) Purpose

5. Conclusion and Future Trends in Online Writers Groups

More than half of group members report that they both learn and teach in the process of providing and receiving critiques, and continued exposure to many such learning opportunities is ascribed as a major factor in overall improvement as a writer. When considered with the diversity of features of writers groups, the provider’s benefits also provide a survey snapshot of what can emerge as the range of optimum practices and feature development as writers group communication shifts to greater online interactivity.

Although conventional writing groups and online writers groups have each been operating for about a decade, the two had little communication with each other. The results of this study suggest that bringing online writers groups into the organizational mainstream of conventional groups might provide some practical synergy. If convenience encourages more writers to join writers groups, they will likely receive the plurality of expressed benefit relationships.