23 June 2010

A Community of Writers

As readers and writers of Electric Spec may have deduced, all the editors (and our "tech guy") are writers, too. In fact, all of us editors are members of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, where we met many years ago. In addition, I am right now at my M.F.A. Residency. My point is, it is very important for writers to be in a community of writers. Writers give each other support. Who else can you whine to that your antagonist is just too wimpy, or you don't have the heart to revise your latest short story yet again? :) Who else can you complain to that those *$%^?!& Electric Spec editors rejected another story? :( And that's not even taking into account how helpful fellow writers can be for market info and critiques. Personally, joining a group of other writers helped me realize I was a writer.

Nowadays, you can find writers' communities all over the place. There are formal educational groups in M.F.A. programs. There are formal in-person and on-line writers organizations such as Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers (which I highly recommend, no matter where you live). There are informal, purely electronic groups (Betsy can probably address them better than I). Or, heck, get your writing friends together and start your own writers group using yahoogroups or whatever. Good luck and have fun!

Does anyone have a good writers group they want to brag about? :)

And don't forget to send us your speculative fiction stories. :)

1 comment:

Betsy Dornbusch said...

I could probably write a book on online tribes.

But yeah, everyone need their tribe. Whenever I make a sale I tell my husband, my critique group, and then the rest of the world, in that order. And sometimes my crit group gets my rejections, too, just because they understand and will wish me luck next time. It helps. :)