Customer Reviews

The Writing Group Book: Creating and Sustaining a Successful Writing Group

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Here is a book so jammed-packed with tried and true ideas it will make you want to start a writing group if you are not already in one. It even tells you how. Excellent advice on starting, organizing and maintaining a writing group is shared by dozens of writers from all genres.

What they have in common is the need for feedback and encouragement from other writers. What they have learned is shared through these individual essays. Each includes "Favorite Resources" to share books, organizations, retreats and conferences, web sites, even writing exercises. Final chapters offer guidelines for public readings, publishing and marketing. There's something here for every writer.

Anybody who has ever been a member of a writing group knows how helpful and beneficial such groups are. They give you motivation to keep writing, serve as surrogate audiences so you know through the development process whether you're on the right track, and even provide you with the opportunity to socialize with people who have the same bizarre compulsion to translate thoughts into words. But anybody who has ever been a member of a writing group knows that it's very difficult to build and maintain a group. So here comes editor Lisa Rosenthal with some pointers.

This book is comprised of articles by members of writing groups from coast to coast, and even internationally. If you want to start a group based on a theme or genre, a group at work or at a recreational location, or even start an expatriate group overseas, this book is your ticket. There are articles on fishing for your first fellow members and articles on starting groups online. There are also articles on providing first aid for a group that's grown sick and wandered from its original goal, and even articles on how to tell when a group is past repair, and how to make a smooth clean break.

There are a few articles in this volume that aren't useful. The editor includes not one but two stories about the frustrations suffered by a group that decided to publish their own anthology, stories that feel more like water-cooler anecdotes thanuseful pointers. And one article, ostensibly about how to give good critique, seems focused more on giving lengthy excerpts from the author's short erotic story. These could have used a stronger editorial hand.

As the title indicates, the primary focus of the book is on Creating and Sustaining a Successful Writing Group. There's not much on finding where such a group might already exist. I for one would have liked some pointers on how to tell if a lively and thriving group might already be out there working, especially if you're not in a large city. Perhaps there will be something like that in the second edition.

Essentially this book is ideal if you want to start and maintain a writers' group. Most writers thrive in a group environment, producing better and more engaging work; and since many writers are solitary by nature, this book provides guidelines for how to get out of your writer's hobbit hole and work with your fellow artists. Though this book is far from perfect, it will help get you started and keep you moving in the right direction over the long haul. This book is a treasure for writers who write to be read.

If you have decided to write for a living, brace yourself. You probably already know this life is at times lonely and often filled with rejection. One of the easiest ways to overcome these feelings is to gather some sympathetic writers around you and have a regular time to meet. As Lisa Rosenthal writes in the introduction to this excellent resource, "The first step is regularity. Meeting at a specific time and place creates deadlines and a community that members can count on, and as familiarity with each other's voice grows, the helpfulness of feedback increases, and members become more invested in each other's work."

Rosenthal has pulled together an amazing collection of essays from different types of writers and different writing situations. The book is organized into four sections. The first portion focuses on the basics such as starting a writing group whether face to face or online and with writers of different genres and experience levels. The second section emphasizes constructive critique and also teaches how to maintain a fruitful writing group in spite of conflicts and various other challenges. The third section provides various insights into why some groups flourish and other groups fizzle with loads of advice how to keep your group moving ahead. The final section gives different ideas on how to move the writing group to a broader level of visibility with publishing anthologies and sponsoring group events. Back of this book features some simple tips for specific groups like a playwriting group or how to market your work.

I've got many books on writing but I've never seen a singular book focused on this aspect of the writing life. You will find the different perspectives and voices refreshing in this book. It doesn't matter what type of writing group you'd like to begin, this book contains some collective insight and wisdom to help you pull it together.