Why Joining a Group Matters

Joining a group means commitment to writing, to critique, to producing work with the goal of improving our skills and developing tools, and to be published.

I've learned about genre, using too many characters, eliminating unnecessary words, phrases, pages that do not move the story forward. I've learned cooperation and kindness. Our group does not meet over drinks. We enjoy, for the most part, our meetings being focussed meaningful learning opportunities. We laugh quite often. Writing is a solo adventure. Being able to get together with people who share this passion is very important to me.

We have evolved from meeting to discuss submitted work to having short trainings about asubmitting work to publishers, for building our websites, networking and linking. Our group managed to set up our individual websites. We share info about upcoming literary events and our affiliations are expanding.

Robecca Austin's Colorful Pen website is a must see for anyone interested in writing, learning about writing, many valuable links to other resources and her articles are stunning. J.C. Murdak just published a novel. He helped several of us get our websites set up and posted an instruction article on WordSilly. He showed me how to use mind-mapping and several different sources. * I learned about building suspense and blending story lines from James Ruth. Laurie Hazel brings fresh ideas, dynamic sharing, commitment and passion. Christine is insightful and specific when reviewing work as well as keeping the meetings relaxed and moving forward. T'J. is our spiritual leader and wrangler. He has shared children stories, poetry and Allie the Armadillo Astronaut.

We support and encourage each other to get out of our comfort zones. As a direct result of the support of Wordsilly I have had two short stories published and am deep into writing a novel about Canadian identity and stuff. We were among the first hardy members of what is now the Hamilton Mountain Writers Guild. We have been meeting for two years.

Put your egos aside and build a dynamic writing group. People seeing us meeting must think what an odd group. Not that we are odd but our group works as it should. Thank you all for a most enjoyable, enlightening and fun journey.

*What is Mind mapping? part flow chart, part storyboard, part brainstorming device, part outline / summary - in short a device of brevity. An open ended non-binary galaxy complete with its own gravity. And fun? In the app I use, Mind Maps classic, you have standard controls plus a little feature that allows one to mix the system into new configurations just by tapping a direction.