Hi fellow writers, I'm trying to put together a writing group for novice writers like myself. I live in Ireland in Wexford so I was hoping to find authors that live in this area. I'm thinking that the group can meet in a cafe once a week for 2 hours where we can read each others work and comment on what we think is good about it and what needs improvement. I'm also going to set up a forum so that writers of the group can have more hours checking each others work from the comfort of their own homes. I really want this to be a success so I'm putting everything I can into this and if anyone is interested please let me know by my email [email protected]
Hi Theodore, why not have a word with your local library, they will usually allow you to use the premises free, we meet once a month and the council even send one of their employees from time to time to talk and give guidance. When I say one of their employees, I don't mean some random chap or chapess from transport services!!!! it's usually someone from their education services and it is a help. I am not sure if the once a month thing is their rule or if the group decided (before I joined) that once a month is sufficient. It can't hurt to ask and of course they will advertise it from the noticeboard. You are more than likely one of many who is looking for this type of support.
Regards Paul
I just did this about two weeks ago in my own town! Quite far from Ireland, unfortunately.
I can't speak for people there, and I don't know what age range you're aiming at, but the biggest advice I can give you is not to give up. You can expect to run into a bunch of obstacles in the beginning - some people not taking it seriously, meetings with most people too busy with something else to come, people who can't handle anything but praise and all kinds of little misunderstandings and problems related to all that.
Also, you might want to keep in mind that there's quite a few differences when it comes to writing prose, poetry or scripts, and then fiction/non-fiction and so on. Just a suggestion, but you might want to consider choosing what your writing club will focus on (say, only prose works of any length and genre), or separate it into two or more groups to cover everything. It might seem that it's not hard to handle everything, but there really are differences in writing as well as reviewing so drastically different works, especially if you're not equally comfortable with all of them (which is another thing - at least in the beginning, everyone will be looking at you as a leader and expect you to know what to say about everything).
I'll stop here, but I've spent weeks planning my own writing club to smallest details, and I'm glad to see someone else doing it to! If you have any questions or feel like comparing experiences (I actually really wonder if geographical location might play any sort of role at all in how interested people are in these things, among other stuff), feel free to message me :)
Good luck~
I would have loved this if you lived near me. It would be a good push to get going whenever I was struggling with writing