Showing posts with label writing groups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing groups. Show all posts

Your Writing

 Write. Practice writing. Observe your writing and that which you have written.

The above works very well without others, but others, like those in a writing group, can help you and your writing significantly.

                A group of learners can co-operate to teach one another and that a group of writers can co-operate to help each other to write better. On this site I am offering some methods which can aid you in this endeavor. You may find that many of  the essays on this same site can also help you to satisfying writing. 

                I find it interesting that self-growth seems to occur with growth in writing abilities; and, that writing abilities mature and sharpen along with maturity and development of self. Such growth, ability, maturing, and skill building have often been well accomplished by a lone writer. Even so, a group with a common aim can be abundantly helpful.

                The lifelong process by which we grow and mature seems improved by improvement in our writing. Your observation may convince you that self development and improvement occurs as we better the quality of our writing. You may find it a good reason to keep writing.

                We may note changes in ourselves and in our writing occur during the writing of a single piece. I have often found that I can begin writing believing x rather than y and by the end of  that writing  be convinced the reality is y rather than x. Writing seems a thought process and reasoning one as well.

                As we believe in our personal growth and learning, may we not believe in our potential to develop our word power? Belief is useful and even powerful. many benefit from their belief that their practice writing improves their writing.
Our efforts to better express ourselves with language, has great potential for moving to express ourselves. As we practice writing we come to observe examples of our improved writing. Those observations can energize our writing in ways which allows it to grow and develop. We become better writers and we write better. Writers have believed that development of their writing helped them to become better human beings.

Consider a writing group

                Consider feedback. Consider the nature and use of feedback. Members of a group can provide one another useful feedback. You, as a writer, receiving congenial feedback from fellow writers, can find such feedback real aid to good and better writing. Many writers have become great without such aid, but may have done so with greater ease and speed with it.

                I hope that you are helped by my words here. You may find help or encouragement in other essays on writing at this blogsite. 

                Thank you for reading.
       
                Write.




                                                                                    Richard

                  

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