The Power of Support in the Writing Community

Writing is a solitary act. We ideate in the shower or while we’re driving. Getting words on paper can mean spending hours on end alone typing on our worn keyboards or scribbling away word after word in our pile of notebooks.

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It may even involve fiercely protecting writing time by saying no to get-togethers or spending early mornings and late nights with a cup of coffee being the only thing keeping us company.

What if I told you it didn’t always have to be this way?

Imagine if you could identify a plot hole, and you had people to hash that out with. You get stumped, feeling like you’re never going to finish the damn book, and a friend who knows what it’s like encourages you to keep going. Or, you find that you just aren’t making time for writing, but there’s a group in your city or online that helps you set time aside to do just that.

I’ve found this in my writing communities.

My weekly “Shut Up & Write” Group provides accountability. Each week, I go, and we write for an hour in silence. It’s frowned upon to take out your phone, and you have to check in at the end of the hour to see how it went. Recently, I told them I was working on this piece, and I had a friend check in the next time I saw her to ask how it was going. Writing gets done!

My pandemic-era online writing group provided growth. My friends would point out when something made more sense in my head than it did on paper, and I’d correct it and report back the following week to see if I had made it make sense. It was also a safe zone for me to learn to give feedback. I would feel like I had nothing to contribute, but I’d say what I felt anyway and eventually grew confident that I was contributing.

In my Grubstreet (a Boston-based organization) “Memoir & Meditation” class, I found inspiration from reading excerpts from published authors, hearing talented writers share their own pieces, and receiving direct teaching from an experienced instructor. I remember listening to a fellow classmate read her beautifully crafted piece—it was the moment when “showing, not telling” clicked in my brain.

While solitude is an inevitable part of the writing journey, communities can provide accountability, inspiration, and tremendous growth.

Writing a book or even a short story can feel like a slog. For many of us, it’s hard to garner the motivation to see it through to the end. There are estimates floating around on the internet that suggest only 3% of individuals who begin writing a book actually finish the manuscript.

If you’re the type of writer who can consistently motivate themselves in isolation, my hat is off to you. For me, becoming a part of that 3% has meant finding others with whom I can share what I’m either writing or not. This means showing up to a weekly writer’s group and both writing with them and telling them what I’m working on. It also means telling them when I’m not writing and hearing that they understand but encourage me to keep going. “Just don’t give up” is a common sentiment amongst weary but unshaken writers.

A study by the Association for Talent Development found that those who have an accountability appointment with a committed partner have a 95% chance of achieving their goals. While you will need to write alone at times, going through the process with others brings you closer to finishing your project.

It’s difficult to grow as a writer in isolation. We can read pieces on craft, books in and out of our genre, and listen to podcasts on writing, but tremendous growth can also come from getting feedback from others.

The best moments of my learning have come from another writer saying, “Have you thought about it like this?” A lightbulb goes off, and suddenly, next time, I write the sentence differently. With no formal training in writing, I had no idea what the difference between “showing” and “telling” was until a friend filled me in.

A community like a local writing critique group can be an opportunity to get out of your head and have your work seen more objectively.

As I mentioned, giving feedback is also a part of growth. Taking what I’ve learned and being able to share that with other writers has instilled confidence and a sense of community in me.

Have you ever thought, “I’ll never finish this,” or “What’s the point of all this work?” 

Being in community can mean bringing these concerns to your writing buddies and having them both validate your experience and encourage you to keep on keeping on. They also saved me from bad ideas, like my naive thought that I should start my memoir out with a flashback—and learned from a more seasoned writer friend that this was overdone.

My best ideas have not come from brainstorming or forcing myself to write. They’ve actually come in conversation with other writers or while supporting a fellow author at their book launch. I came up with the idea for my next novel while listening to a fiction author at a bookstore talk about his process of writing a queer YA book.

Get creative about where you write, ideate, and play. You might be surprised.

Check out Ginelle Testa's Make a Home Out of You here:

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There are so many places to find a writing community. Here are just some ideas:

Without community, I never would have written my memoir or any of the personal essays I’ve churned out, and they wouldn’t be the quality they are without their feedback. I’d have given up putting my pen to paper a long time ago if it wasn’t for all the people I’d met along the way. While writing can be solitary, it can also be a beautiful community-based activity.