I’m in a town where everybody’s a writer. Like L.A. where every taxi driver and waiter is a screenwriter. There is a writer group here that meets every Wednesday evening in a crowded cafe with bad acoustics where a dozen of the 20 or so attendees distribute copies of their scribbles (an expensive requirement), read them and then invite critique. I am a member of it, though I haven’s attended for a couple of years, but I get e-mail notifications thrice weekly. I never read there, attended two or three meetings, which was sufficient, and went to another group which had 3-4 attendees and met on Tuesdays at the same place. That one’s defunked, as its leader who used it to get help editing his New Age masterpiece, finally published it had a baby or two, and went on the speaker’s circuit.
Anyway, the larger group was/is led by a published Israeli-American writer, a moonbat to a high degree who wants to change the world with his writings, he says, a nice guy otherwise, and not a terribly good writer, but, as I said, published, not self-published. The attendees were mostly middle aged or older people, most of them writing mysteries, fashioned after famous mystery writers, and not altogether bad. One guy was writing a western, quite good, engaging, lots of detail, good characters (I think he was a retired journalist or something), and I thought what is he doing among these amateurs. All in all, it wasn’t as bad as you suggest, or as bad as my smaller Tuesday group of mostly random irregulars.
The problem with writing, as I see it, is that it’s so easy, anyone can do it, so many do it, the security guard at the company where I used to work, who ratted on me to the CEO after I was laid off, is a “writer” (self-published), I am a writer (published in magazines), my good friend for whom English is a third or fourth language, is a writer, a good one, but one who commits embarrassing grammar and spelling errors that he doesn’t ask me to correct, so I don’t. But I read top shelf literature, unlike many people who read junk, which convinces them, as it would anyone, that they can do better, while my top shelf stuff tells me I can’t do chit!
I wrote a post-modern story yesterday. A story, you might say, about itself.
Cheers.
Agree, groups are potentially fun and interesting and a really good group might inspire you to do your best. But those groups are hard to find, and amateur writers can tear into other writers’ work unmercifully. Not good.
Anyone can write just as anyone can sing. But well enough to get paid for it?
Here’s a wild concept you might drop into the mix, if people really hope to get published: Whoever told you to write for yourself was wrong. The only important person in the room when you’re writing is the READER.
I’ve asked writers to visualize their target audience, cut out pictures of similar people from magazines and tape them to their computer screens. Consult with them throughout the day.
I had a wonderful woman friend when I first started out...she was not a writer but a very smart woman with a very clear mind. I’d just sort of write TO her. Does this sentence/chapter communicate to Helen? If not, revise. Or delete.
In fact, most self-pub books would benefit from having about 1/3 of the pages deleted and the writing tightened up. I’m not going to say that at the authors’ meeting, as they’ve already made those mistakes. Yes, they are, for the most part, retired people. Some quite interesting. One fellow has written and sold 25 audiobooks, just one in print. He knows what he’s doing in his particular market, which is mostly made up of long-distance drivers. Truck drivers love his work. He (a retired professor) writes FOR them. The books roll out, the checks roll in. Nice.
Best luck to you :)