How to Find and Choose a Writers' Group

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - like a writers' group to help you improve your writing. The right writers' group can be your friends, the kind of friends who tell you when your fly is open, instead of leaving you out there to realize it yourself. The writers' group will delight you, anger you, astonish you, irritate you, and make you laugh.

The wrong writers' group is probably worse than going it alone.

How do you find a writers' group?

Oh, gosh, let me count the ways.

Go to a conference, either on writing, or on science fiction, mysteries, romances. Ask around for a writers' group there. Look at their bulletin board.

Check out your local colleges and community colleges. Call libraries.

And, mainly, check the Web. Search for "writers' groups" or "writers' workshops." Limit by place, if you like. My search for "writers groups ohio" got a couple of million hits, some of which were useful. "Writers groups cleveland ohio," brought up the Poets and Writers League of Greater Cleveland.

What do you write? If you have a focus, there's probably a writers' group to fit it. For instance, check out the website for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. They have an especially good, easy-to-follow site (must be all that writing for children!), and you can check out your local region, to see where and when meetings are held, and whom to contact about them. Science fiction writers, romance writers, mystery writers, all have websites, and often mention writers' groups.

When you find a writers' group, there are a couple of things you need to know.

1. About what level writer is the group aimed at? You can ask, and they may tell you, but going to a meeting is the only way to find out for sure. "Oh, we're all beginners here," doesn't tell you much. Some groups have requirements, such as an audition story before you're accepted. That's a clue that the group is not for people just starting to learn to write. A group sponsored by a college will tend to have young adults in it, with a variety of skill levels. A group sponsored by a library will have a widely varying range of ages, abilities, and interests.

2. What's the focus of the writers' group? If they all write science fiction, your romance won't be of interest to them. Worse, they won't know how to critique it. They won't know the conventions of the genre, what's been done to death, what's up-and-coming, what must be there for the book to sell.

3. What method of critiquing do they use? I know some poets who go to a restaurant, order dinner, and read their poems to one another. Each brings several copies of his or her poem, so everyone can read along. Then they all talk about it. Another group uses the rather strict Clarion method . Basically, everyone gets a copy of every manuscript before the day of the meeting. Then the author sits silently - silently! --while each person speaks about it the work. At the end, the author gets a few minutes to explain/ reply/say thanks to the writers' group.

I have a possibly sexist remark here. It's my impression that groups which are mostly female, tend to be gentler in their critiques than groups that are more heavily weighted with males. All groups have the rule that you don't attack the writer, only the work - but it's the men who seem to need that rule, for the most part. And mostly-woman groups tend to have a rule that you start by saying something nice. But "something nice" can be a complete waste of time; the useful stuff is the stuff that hurts.

The danger with gentler critiques is that they stop too soon; they don't tell you the really bad news. The danger with harsher ones is that they discourage you by not telling you the good news.

But writers' groups are like counselors: you have to find the one that's right for you. And sometimes you have to keep trying different ones till you get it right.