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Why It’s So Important To Find A Writing Community

By on August 20, 2017
Why It's So Important To Find A Writing Community - Writer's Life.org

Writing can be a seriously lonely job. For many freelance writers and authors, we spend much of our career holed up at home, in an office, barely communicating with the outside world.

While many writers need that silence and solitude to produce their best work, without having another writers to interact with, it can eventually send one a little stir crazy.

That’s why writers should always strive to find their people, their crew, their gang  - the ones who can pick them up when they're feeling down, and help them keep sane!

Your writing community can be full of different characters, but building up this essential network of people around you can be very rewarding. Still not convinced? Here are some of the reasons why finding a great writing community can be so helpful:

Invaluable support

We all need support and reassurance from time to time and writers are not an exception. A writing community will become your support network and the people that you can rely on and go to for advice when you hit tough times in your career.

Motivation

Having a writing network will motivate you to keep writing. You can revel in one another successes and commiserate each other's failures, but most importantly encourage each other never to give up.

Ideas and problem solving

Writing communities are great for bouncing new ideas off likeminded people, they're also handy source if you’ve got a question that needs answering or a problem that needs solving.

Free critiques

If you make friends with the right sort of people you can ask them your critique and give feedback on your work for free!

Sharing techniques, lessons learned, ways to improve and useful information

Your writing community can be an endless pool of information and resources at your fingertips. From editing and publishing questions to finding new writing exercises to keep improving to experimenting with the genre - anything at all really. A great writing community is always looking out for one another and will be happy to answer any questions you have.

Job opportunities

If you keep in touch with a variety of people in the writing community, you never know where it might lead. You may end up getting a great job because of it, or even getting your book published or landing yourself an agent - so it’s well worth talking to the right people.

So, if you are looking for a writing community, where do you find them?

Keep pitching ideas to editors - if you do good work for an editor this could open up many doors for you!

Keep sending your book to agents and publishers - you never know when you might strike gold!

Join and participate in writing communities - there are loads of writing communities out there from online groups to local meet ups. Get involved in them all.

Go to relevant events

Anything from writing courses to book fairs to local author readings - you never know who you’ll meet there - and who could end up being an invaluable resource, or a life long friend!

Surrounding yourself with a great writing community doesn’t mean that all your time will be taken up nurturing and fostering these new relationships, having to go to endless networking or social events just to keep them close by. Rather, it simply means you’ll have a great group of people you can count on to support, motivate and inspire you - just remember, it’s a two-way street so make sure you offer something back and do the same for them too!

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

Bethany Cadman -author of 'Doctor Vanilla's Sunflowers'

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