What I Learned By Starting a Writing Group
“The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate.”
I put out some feelers on social media to try and gauge interest for a writers group in my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia. I was pleased to receive more interest than anticipated. Of the initial hands raised, 70% of those folks emailed me. Within that bracket, half replied to my introductory email. When I set the first meeting, that number halved again. I began to think it was pointless to continue — that maybe starting a group had been another silly Friday night idea of mine. I tend to have a lot of those.
I emailed one person saying that the meeting wasn’t going ahead. But then I had two other interested parties lock in the meeting, and so I contacted the first person again and said the meeting was back on. I’m glad that I did that.
At the meeting, there was only two other women. It ended up being an excellent number for this encounter because it hit me in real time: I am the facilitator. A detail that I had completely overlooked.
Little me, with my shyness, and always in need of a confidence booster. Little me, who does not like public speaking AT ALL.
I was asked questions like: Where do you see the group going? What is the aim? How will we motivate each other? Completely valid questions—which I had not taken into account. How could I have not thought about leading when I was the one who initiated the group? Simple. I’ve never thought of myself as a leader.
What had I gotten myself into?
Little me, who is more comfortable blending into the background, observing and listening. Little me, who prefers to let the big personalities take the centre stage.
But there was no time to feel the fear, so I just picked up the pace and ran with it.
I did have another hangup with starting a group — and it was the same hangup that prevented me from joining other local groups that had physical meetings and met up regularly to critique work. I didn’t want anyone to feel as though they had to forcibly write in order to feel part of a group. I wanted my group to be a little lighthouse in a writer’s storm. This baseline was kind of poetic, but that was how I felt.
Was this enough for a group’s purpose?
While the questions about the group’s function hung about in my head, the direction of the meeting seemed to change when I spoke about how I wanted to make an income from writing. I got quite specific and said that I wanted to start with articles, but wasn’t sure how to get started.
I began to feel frustrated while I was communicating to the attendees. The words in my mind didn’t make it out of my head via my mouth eloquently. My hands felt like balloons (Pink Floyd style), awkwardly placed on my body, getting in the way. Were they trying to catch my words as they were falling? I don’t know. They were a hindrance and I wanted to chop my hands off whenever I spoke.
The one thought that kept reverberating while I was trying to talk was: Wow, girl, you certainly needed this.
By starting a group and organising a physical meeting, I accidentally set myself two challenges. Leading, and public speaking. The truth was that I needed these challenges. And I didn’t even realise how much I needed them.
Addressing a group of people verbally is painful for me, as I am much better with the written word, but I knew that the more I did it, the better at it I’d become. As far as leading people was concerned, all my life I have believed I am not the leader type. Starting this group put me to the test.
The other two attendees were lovely, and great listeners. Despite my balloon hands, we bounced off each other swimmingly. They were both encouraging in their own way — my group had attracted exactly the kind of people I was hoping for.
It became evident that the other two writers were looking for some accountability. This was surprising and unsurprising. One of the needs of my group had now come to light, and questions about the group’s function were slowly being answered.
The conversation developed naturally and the meeting boiled down to this result: we would set a personal challenge for ourselves with a deadline. I had not expected this at the meeting but I am thrilled that this happened.
The writing challenge I set for myself was to write my first interview with a local musician. It made sense at the time because I love music and I wanted to write in a format that I hadn’t tackled before.
So while I had initially thought that my writing group idea was impulsive, it turned out that I was doing exactly what I needed to do.
