The Pros of Writing Groups
Free, Honest Feedback
We all want to know if our writing is good. Writing group members will provide you with honest and critical feedback, and much needed support. Unless you're willing to pay for a writing class or a professional manuscript evaluation, a critiquing group is a great place to share your early drafts. Just make sure you're ready to receive critical feedback before you go.
Improving Critical eye
Reading other people's writing and trying to articulate why a certain sentence or section is not working will increase your understanding of the way writing works. In a group you will also hear critiques from other members and pick up on things you wouldn't normally notice. The critical eye you develop during critiquing sessions will be indispensable to your own writing craft. (link)
Exposure to New Ideas/Ways of Doing Things
Every writer writers differently. There are different routines, different work spaces, different ways of approaching a text. Talking with other writers is one of the best ways to understand the writing process and to learn tricks that might help you writer better.
Writing Community
One of the greatest benefits of joining a writing group is the connections to a larger writing community. Friends and family may try to be supportive, but there's nothing like the companionship of another writer. And the more writers you know, the more you will learn about different markets, readings, writing conferences and contests in your area.
The Cons of Writing Groups
The Dumbing Down of Literature
In her incisive book Beyond the Writers' Workshop: New Ways to Write Creative Non-Fiction ( Anchor Books 2001) Carol Bly criticizes writing groups for perpetuating the dumbing down of American writing. She asserts that many writing groups are examples of the 'blind leading the blind,' with no one being properly qualified to provide in-depth literary guidance. She urges writers to study great literature of the past and to seek out qualified instruction when necessary rather than relying on their peers.
Tendency Towards Sameness
In some writing groups is a tendency for all the writers of the group to start to sound alike. If there's one experimental poet in a group of realistic prose writers, the poet's work might start sounding a little more mainstream after a few months of meetings. Group members must stay true to their own style.
Substitution for Publication
Too often, writers take a first draft to the workshop group for feedback, and then the critiqued draft sits at home in a drawer full of other drafts. The act of taking the writing to the group has lessened the writer's urgency to get the story out into the world. A workshop group should be one step on the way to publication, not a substitute.
Stifled Creativity
When a creative idea is new, it's like a tiny plant trying to grow. If you take it to a group where it receives a lot of feedback – picture the plant taken outside, exposed to all the elements – it may get squashed before it has a chance to develop. Make sure you're confident in your idea, and that you've spent time writing the idea and developing it before you take it to the group. Otherwise, your own creative voice may be drowned out by all the other opinions.
Sarah Turner - Sarah K. Turner's writing has been published in the Utne Reader and Event magazine, where she was a winner of their 2006 annual Creative ...
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