Writing, by definition, is solitary work. But the writing life does not have to be solitary. It is in writers groups, in community with others, that I have learned to be a writer and a literary citizen. I don’t have an MFA, and at fifty-three it’s unlikely that I ever will. I have had to find other ways to make my writing life sustainable and enriching. My writers group is where I continue writing and revising pages—but even more than that, it’s how I remain a part of the literary world.
My master’s degree is in education, and I love teaching, especially beginner and intermediate adult students who came to the page later in life like I did. Many of my students struggle with giving themselves permission to write within a life that is already full. I don’t write every day; I can’t. When obligations seem endless, it can feel self-indulgent to take time to write. As important as it is to me, there are other things that can and usually do take precedence: my job, my kids, editing manuscripts, preparing for the classes I teach. And then there are days when I just don’t wanna. In an era of short attention spans and binge-worthy television, that avoidant impulse is easy to follow, and self-doubt only makes it easier. Often it’s my writers group that saves me from deciding, dramatically and incorrectly, that I am a failure and should never write again. Making a commitment to a Zoom meeting, knowing someone is depending on me for feedback on a piece they wrote, or having a deadline because it’s my turn to submit, means I have to summon the muse, even when it’s not there on its own.
My writers group has become its own kind of literary education because it teaches me how to keep my writing life alive beyond my desk. It is not only where I bring pages; it is also where I am reminded that a writing life is larger than any single draft. In a group, you witness your fellow writers across time: not just in moments of polish or publication, but in uncertainty, revision, boredom, obsession, avoidance, return, and delight. You see how one piece teaches the next. You watch a subject recur until the writer finally understands why it matters. You learn that a difficult draft is not failure but part of a longer conversation a writer is having with their own work. That perspective has helped me think less in terms of any one successful essay and more in terms of sustained commitment: to a body of work, to the questions that keep calling, and to the practice of keeping on. And when I show up for my group, I can see myself transforming into the writer and editor I have always wanted to be—in the way I support my peers and in the way I support myself.
I am not alone in finding my greatest teacher to be my writers group. For many, its first lessons come from the exchange of feedback. My students ask me all the time how they’ll know when a piece is ready to be submitted for publication, and the answer is, I don’t know. No matter how much time I work on a piece, I need to have another person I trust read it before I submit it. My writing partners point out issues I cannot see because I am too close to the piece, offering feedback that both validates the work and improves it. Michelle Bowdler, author of Is Rape a Crime? A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto (Flatiron Books, 2020), agrees and emphasizes the importance of providing feedback in a way that it can be heard: “We work mostly on ways to give feedback so that it does not destroy but instead focuses on what was working…and suggestions on ways to make some needed changes. It’s respectful, and you can see that they’re suggesting changes that can be heard, and the people being workshopped take the feedback seriously.” Participating in this kind of exchange has made me more thoughtful as a writer, more intentional as a submitter, and more respectful as a group participant. It has made me a much better editor, changing how I read and revise my own work.
Although my group sticks mostly to workshopping, the writers group is also uniquely flexible in the ways writers can use it to explore what feels most urgent to them. Some groups meet to write together. Some also read and discuss books, craft articles, or writing podcasts; take classes or seminars together; or go to book talks. In this way the group is the teacher, and it serves as a social outlet, offsetting the isolation that writing alone can bring.
Being in touch with other writers can also offer solace in moments of rejection—and provide examples of how persistence pays off. Writer Robin Pickering of Camden, Maine, says, “Someone in [my] group placed a piece in a lovely venue, and I learned they had submitted [it] to many different journals for a long time, which made my three or so [rejections] for this one particular piece feel paltry. It was a reminder: You have to keep at it again and again to get that one yes. That idea is everywhere, but when you feel and see it in action in your own writing group, it’s a strong motivator.” Pickering’s group provides her with some of the structure and expectation a different kind of learning space might not provide. “The accountability is stellar,” she says. “I have a decent work ethic but almost always feel more ‘in it’ when I’m in a cowriting session. I’m less likely to wander around the apartment and make tea and pay some bills and pull out the vacuum cleaner if I’m being accountable to another person.”
Rules around group behavior can help writers to share expectations, but rules don’t create trust. Trust is built by showing up. In the past I belonged to a relatively large writers group. There were eight of us, all memoirists in varying stages of publication. To manage the number of members, we wrote a lot of rules and guidelines. It worked for about a year, maybe more, until the person who instituted most of the rules began to break them. The cohesion unraveled from there. If that person was allowed to not show up and wasn’t held accountable, then why not everyone else? But when group members show up in good faith for one another and allow themselves to be vulnerable, trust becomes the glue that keeps the group together. “The longer you work together, the more you trust each other and the more supportive you can be to each other,” Pickering says. “In my writing group I feel like I can send them a polished piece and ask for specific insights, just as I can send them something freshly drafted to get a loose first look to help me answer the question of ‘what is this piece even doing?’” Writer Ari Rubenstein of Somerville, Massachusetts, concurs: “All writing is personal; sharing any unpublished draft feels like whispering a secret you’re not sure you’re ready to tell. Going into a writing group, you need to have a baseline of trust that the people you’re working with can hold your stories.”
The group I am in now has just three members. We have gotten to know one another very well, and when we meet I feel immersed in the writing life. It’s not perfect: We don’t have rules about attendance or feedback. But we’ve fallen into a healthy rhythm of who submits what by when, which can vary from essay-length pieces to our full manuscripts. We’ve developed a format both flexible and structured enough to serve our needs. For Melisse Gelula, a nonfiction writer and the founder of Memoiring Book Club, an online community for lovers of memoir, the space of a thriving writers group affirms her in ways that transcend artistic validation: “The focused presence the writers in my groups bestow on me makes me feel incredibly seen as a person and a writer. I wish that feeling for everyone.”
A good writers group isn’t defined by rules. It isn’t defined by size. A writers group is working when it teaches you how to read and how to revise, and it makes you want to keep at the often isolating, frequently soul-crushing, but always beautiful work of writing. For me that has been the education I needed: not a degree, but a practice of showing up—for the page, for other writers, and for the life I keep choosing.
Aimee Seiff Christian is a writer, a teacher, and an editor whose essays have appeared in national publications and literary journals including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Independent, the Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, SmokeLong Quarterly, Atticus Review, Pidgeonholes, and the Los Angeles Review. She teaches memoir and personal essay and works with writers on turning lived experience into literary nonfiction. Her memoir-in-progress, “Nobody’s Daughter,” explores adoption, secrecy, inheritance, motherhood, and the stories families tell in order to survive themselves.
