12 Reasons Why You Should Join a Local Writing Group

I was only going to do 10, but there are a lot more than that!

Photo by Edvin Johansson on Unsplash

I have heard quite a few bad things said about writing groups, so, without more ado, I will sing the praises of my own local writing group. Benefits include:

1. The obvious joy of social interaction (on a face to face level). Medium has a really great social aspect, but what is even better, is sitting down with a cuppa to discuss writing opportunities, character creation and dialogue, in a relaxed atmosphere with friends.
2. You will likely be able to source local (and not so local) writing opportunities more easily. Different members will hear of different things that are going on, and there may even be a particular member of the group who gathers writing competitions.
3. You will have a regular writing slot in your week (if you don’t have one already).
4. You will find that you stretch yourself by writing about subjects and topics that you would not normally write about. In the group I belong to members take it in turns to run workshops each week. This allows for a great variety of writing topics and styles. For example, one person might write poetry more than fiction and another is particularly good at ghost stories. I usually take a class on sci-fi writing, which is equally challenging to my more…