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I've never been to a face-to-face writer's group. I'm not even sure if this group really qualifies for that, but their meeting is tomorrow night not horribly far away.
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I've been happy with my in-person writer's group, but I can see why it wouldn't be a good fit for some people. Most are not published and aren't necessarily actively seeking publication, but they're a good resource for brainstorming, great for bouncing ideas off them, great for reacting to first pages, hooks, etc. They don't necessarily read/write in the genre so I can't always rely on their feedback as helpful for specific things like the pace a story should start in, or character voice (since I write in YA almost exclusively, this is a big thing and unless you read a lot of YA, you might not understand the point of voice.)
But they're a nice group of quirky writerly folk and it's been great for me to connect with them and have a place to go to twice a month where I know I will at least write a few words each time!
Our group is structured as a "writer's support group", meets at a big chain bookstore in the area. We talk about the craft, update each other on progress (a lot of times this is about things beyond just our writing - like job hunting, latest legal squabbles for the lawyer in the group, etc.) And then we always have time to do some free writing from a prompt or picture, after which we share what we wrote. We're not a critiquing circle, though we do some critting offline from the group. It works for me, and it gives me some accountability with people who know I said I would be editing my novel, lol.
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Well, I went. It wasn't what I'd call a face-to-face writer's group, but it was interesting. The speaker was an agent from a local agency. How cool is that? They are normally closed to unsolicited submissions, but I may just be able to sneak one in because of this meeting. Can't hurt to try.
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And she asked for the first three chapters. Not that she sounds really hopeful about it. But she asked! That's never happened to me before. Not yet.
[This message has been edited by Meredith (edited May 05, 2010).]
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Well, I went to my first face to face group last night. It was aimed more at new writers, but I quite enjoyed it. It was interesting to see what can (and can't) be accomplished in a two hour session, and it was amusing to see the sort of interpretive disagreements that crop up on writing boards appear in conversation.
A more experienced spec-fic group meets monthly, so I'll be checking that out in the next few weeks.
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