A Writing Group

Write With RCS: One of the top values of a writing group is the variety of great feedback it often provides.

 

            The developing, growing, maturing writer learns to value the feedback of one's peers. Such feedback is precious and very often rare. Your writing group will be made up of fellow writers. In such a group you can have several knowledgeable readers telling you about the feelings and thoughts your writing stirred in them. They can tell you what they felt as they read a specific piece of your work. You can get regular feedback of several kinds from the members of your group.

 

            I hope to post more about feedback and other benefits of a writing group in future posts. This particular post is a short wide-ranging introduction to the subject.

 

            A writing group is usually about writing better without the use of a teacher. However, a writing group may attract more than one teacher, including teachers of writing. Don't be surprised if that happens, teachers are often learners who want to learn more about their subject.

They might, however, need to be reminded that they are not there to teach. They are there as a learning reader and writer. They are there to be good readers ready to provide their honest reactions to that which they read. Each of your group members focus on telling you how she experiences the work you submit. Just as you will tell her how you experience your careful reading of her work.

 

            Quickly moving forward, I here add actions you may consider taking before you choose a writing group or before making one of your own.You can:

~ Start writing and keep writing.

~ Find a writing group in action close to you and check it our.

~ Sit in a a couple of meetings to see how it may benefit or suit you.

~ Check  out online posts here and elsewhere about writing and writing groups.

~ Talk with a writing friend about forming a group.

~ Consider that most better writers have been good readers.

            Once you better know your options and better know the kind of group you want, you might consider thoughts you would like potential members of your group to consider.Here are some sample points of the sort:

~ Find a time for your meeting and stick to it. Its fair to have have two writing groups each meeting at a different time.

~ Help one another to become better listeners and better readers as well as better writers.

~ Help each other to better know the kinds of feedback most needed and most wanted.

~ Decide on whether you want to handout your work to be read at home, to read your work aloud at meetings, or both, or what. 

~ When you read a piece in group, read it twice. You will find that two readings are much better than one.

~ Show up at meetings.

            I enjoy and appreciate your comments about specific parts of the content of my posts. There is, I hope, a "comment" window just below. It may sometimes be marked with the words "no comments!"

 

                                                                    RCS

Writing Feedback Two

Write With RCS: This is a bit more about readers in writing groups. There is also info that can be of interest to other writers.

            Feedback can be the most important activity of your writing group. You can get precious feedback when members of your group read a given piece of your work in preparation for giving you the feedback you are looking for. You may want praise, but you benefit by knowing what your writing does to others.

            If you are now in a writing group you ought to soon have your turn as one of the readers providing valuable feedback. You may be an excellent reader and have read much as a writer learning your craft. However so, you will become a better reader  yet, as you read to provide feedback to your fellow writers.

            Use your reading skills to be a better provider of useful feedback.

Here is a miscellany of suggestions for becoming a reader better able to serve your writers:

~ Be willing to become more aware and more conscious.

~ Be willing to become a better perceiver .

~ Be willing to be even more honest than usual.

~ Note that as you perceive more consciously you perception becomes more accurate.

~ Be more attentive to your feelings as you read.

~ Be ready to tell the writer how you understood his writing.

~ Be ready to tell him how you perceive and experience his words.

~ Be ready to replay your experience of her writing as a kind of movie.

~ Remember that you are not a teacher here.

~ You are a reporter of experience, yours.

~ Remember that you are in a teacher-less writing group.

~ Be ready to give your writer a brief summary of what you think she has written. What does it add up to. 

~ What is its center of gravity? What sticks out. Tell us.

~ If you can, summarize this particular pies of writing in a single sentence. 

~ Choose  a word which most summarizes the piece. Choose a word from his writing. Choose a word not from his writing.

~ Don't plan or think too much about this first summary.

~ Tell the writer what happenings or doings she made stand out most at your first reading.

~ Tell her what you remember from last week's piece.

~ Simply tell the writer everything that happened to you as you carefully read her work. Tell how you felt as you read. Were you surprised? Happy? Tell if or when you began to like it.

~ Advice offering or giving is usually avoided. However, if your interaction with the writer indicates a real desire for advice and you feel you have good advice to offer, an exception may be made.

~ Be aware that this is not a story. Its about how you carry our your part in this section of your group.

~ Your feedback comes directly from your experience of the specific piece.

~ You might tell what specific voices are like at various points.

~ Describe what you think the writer's intentions were with this specific piece. Think of some crazy intention he might have had.

~ You might swallow it whole and give the result.

~ Just tell how you experienced work through imagination and feeling. 

                                                                                    rcs