The other day someone on twitter asked for opinions on writing groups for a seminar she’s teaching MFA students.  What a great topic, I thought, to discuss with students before they get out of the MFA workshop environment into the real world.  What a great topic, really, for any writer.  And since new writers ask me periodically about writing groups, I thought I’d share some of my answers to their questions.

1)      How do you find a writing group?  These days, anyone with a computer can find a writing group.  When I moved to Charleston, I found my current group listed on craigslist.  But for new writers, I would recommend a class or a workshop with an instructor to facilitate.   Critiquing is a learned skill, and it’s always good to learn with a leader who knows what she’s doing.    Once you’ve been in a class for six or eight weeks, you’ll have a good feel for the writers who are on a similar level and have similar sensibilities who might be interested in forming a group.   Then it’s just a matter of approaching them and putting it together.

2)      How many people should you have in a group?  I’ve found that a group of fewer than five sometimes falls apart because it’s hard to keep up the momentum and have enough material to critique if you meet once a week.  If all four are prolific, though, it might work fine.  On the other hand, a large group can become unwieldy.  But always allow for attrition.  The group I am in now had eight members, lost one, and is adding another this week.

3)      How often should we meet?  The groups I’ve been in have all met once a week, but you can meet once a month or as often as everyone wants.  The important thing to remember is that you have to have members committed to submitting and attending when it’s scheduled, realizing that of course sometimes life gets in the way. Someone who only attends when he’s being critiqued, though, or who only shows up every fourth meeting, doesn’t belong in your group.

4)        How should it be organized?  There are lots of books out there on how to run a writing group.  The only really important rule, I think, is that the one being critiqued needs to shut up and listen when others are discussing his/ her work.  Some groups submit in rotation, some have members submit whenever they have something to submit.  I would suggest that you try to allow approximately thirty minutes to discuss each piece.  So if you meet for two hours, don’t plan on discussing more than four pieces each meeting.

5)      What if someone is rude or just isn’t working out in the group?  All I can say there is if it’s not a good fit, get rid of that person.  Don’t lose good members because you don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings or don’t know how to get rid of her.  And if you join a group and it’s negative or is mainly a social club and isn’t meeting your needs, don’t waste time – get out.

Whether you’re a new writer, or have been published many times, a writing group can provide much needed insight into your work.  And if you’re lucky, like I have been, you’ll also be blessed with cheerleaders and lifelong friends.

This week I had an email conversation with a college boyfriend I haven’t spoken to in years. (OK Greg, I warned you.  Writers use everything.  You are now in my archives.)  That got me thinking about how our past informs our present and our future, how as a writer everything I’ve ever experienced is in my work whether I mean for it to be or not, whether I realize it or not.  Little things, like the crooked smile of someone once in my life, or big things, like the day my father left.  Sweet memories of citizenship awards and hurtful ones of being teased for wearing glasses when I was only in kindergarten.   Encouraging words from my second grade teacher about a story I had written, and harsh ones from the third grade teacher who made me stand in a closet until I almost wet my pants.  It’s all there, somewhere, in the story of the little girl who is afraid of basements, or the boy who is bullied, or the man whose wife leaves him.  In the sun glinting off the water like broken glass, in the acorns crunching under tires echoing those in the driveway of my childhood home.

I think writing is a sort of mental archeology.  You dig for artifacts, most often not knowing exactly what you’re looking for, but gently dusting the dirt from memories, bringing them into the open for others to see.  Usually you have no idea yourself what you’ve found, only that it looks interesting and might be something special.  A smell, a sound, a song.  I try not to think too hard about the context of the memories, only the feelings they invoke.  To me the memories serve not to tell my story, but to tell a universal story, a story that others can connect with.

Because who really cares about my dad leaving, or my citizenship award, or that I listened to James Taylor and Jimmy Buffet and David Bowie in college?  But give me a character and a few of those telling details, and I might come up with a story much more interesting than my own.

The worst thing I can hear from a writer when defending something in workshop is “but it really happened.”  If I want to read a memoir, I’ll read a memoir.  And it better damned well be interesting.  But if I want to read fiction, I want a story, not an autobiography.  While I believe that we use everything in our past as material, it should be used as atmosphere, not the story itself.

So dig deeply, but carefully, and treasure what you unearth as unique material that only you have access to.  Just don’t bore me with the history of the artifact. Give me a story.