On Writing Groups

So the past few weeks I have been genuinely missing the writing group back in Quark. It seems like that nostalgia would be a good source of a post, so here we go.

I first attended the Quark writing group almost seven years ago, at the instigation of my good friend Aneeka. Well, she’s a friend now; at the time she was just a vaguely terrifying, anonymous internet person who managed to notice that I had signed on to the Quark internet forum out of curiosity. She managed to wheedle the fact that I wrote as a hobby out of me and invited me to a meeting, where she became far more concretely terrifying. :)

In that writing group I quickly found a solid group of friends and fellow writers, one of whom turned out to tolerate me enough to marry me. The continued support and feedback I got from that group, as well as the social interaction and friendship, allowed me to view my writing in a new light and get serious about forming my stories into something much more effective. My writing group friends quickly became an inspiration to not only continue writing, but expand my abilities. I even began to first consider my lifelong dream of actually publishing something seriously after I was involved in the Quark group.

Now, however, my old writing buddies have scattered to the four winds, and I seem to be hurting for lack of a similar group. That direct encouragement is something I miss, although I’ve preserved it in some form by having some of my old friends read things over for me from time to time. Still, it just isn’t the same as having a group discuss a bit of writing together, with that same amount of discussion and support that comes from a direct meeting. Finding one here in Houston might land me in the middle of a bunch of teenagers writing Twilight fan fics, which is something I would not look forward to, but gathering the old group is more or less impossible. I doubt that everyone could make their way to one location from Japan, Utah, the West Coast and Houston to one place to have a writing group, and the wide diversity of time zones kind of stops any attempt at internet groups. Grg. I may simply have to resign myself to the fact that the Quark group was a unique opportunity for me in terms of my writing development, but it would be awesome to have some of that same motivation and inspiration right now. Oh well. To good editors and better friends, wherever they might be. May all go well for you, and at least one of us get published so we can all get bragging rights. :) See ya!