Top 9 Personalities You Find in a Writing Group

Which one are you?

I have been in the market for a group of like-minded individuals spending their afternoons in coffee shops writing their masterpieces with the loving critique of their fellow group members to be agent ready.

A Writing Group.

Everyone gets published and they live fabulous lives in my fantasy. The End. The End. The End. The End. Everyone gets a The End.

I tried getting a group together using my contacts on the interwebs. I have hundreds of friends who aspire to write a manuscript. I thought I had a group but discovered that no day for the foreseeable future was going to work for all of us and it was disbanded before it got started.

Someone suggested I try the library. I poured through the list of groups getting together at my local branch. If I wanted to learn the ukulele or read Polish, I’d be all set. I did find a few after googling “Toronto Public Library Writing Groups.” None of them worked out.

I also discovered a website called Meet-Up in my desperation and found a few gems and a bunch of rough stones there too. In the process, there were a lot of personalities I encountered. To be clear, I want to meet people of all kinds. Writers need fodder and inspiration. Getting that from your desktop and your dog is hard.

For those of you with thriving writing groups, congrats bitch. For those who are still in the market, beware — this is what’s out there.

I am going to write the greatest novel ever written.

This is an actual quote upon my first meeting with this confident chap. Hey, it may well be true. And, you can’t help but love a guy with such belief in himself that he can make that statement without a shred of irony. I hope he does write the most excellent novel ever written. I will be in line for a signed copy and a wink wishing I had bet on that horse when he was in chapter one.

I don’t write, but I want to.

This was very common in many of the groups I attended. Good on them for having the dream and taking the first step. Let’s see if they make it past the first hurdle.

I am not writing a memoir, but my kids want me to write down my stories.

Two of the memoir groups I attended were filled with people jotting down memories. I was the youngest in the room by about twenty years and the rest of the group were in the ‘jotting down memories’ phase of their lives because a child asked them to before the will was read.

When the stories were read aloud, they were a mish-mash of words jumbled together to form an almost complete thought without an introduction to who uncle Jerome was and why he wasn’t wearing pants.

I wanted to hear about Uncle Jerome but it must have already been family folklore because it was a throw-away line. Instead, I heard about a tea set where everyone was, apparently, wearing pants.

Don’t ask me.

This is my favorite person in the group. They come to writing groups and dutifully hear all that others have to say, and when asked what genre they write in or what they are working on the answer is, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Now I desperately want to know! Is it porn? It has to be porn. Is he researching writing groups to write a book and doesn’t want to reveal his plan? Is he ghostwriting for Stephen King who is in a coma somewhere after a tragic writer’s block incident? Is now really the time to be picking off your nail polish?

So. Many. Questions.

I’m just writing for myself, and I don’t want to share.

Cool cool. So why did you come to a writing group where we all share? What am I missing?

I like to hear myself talk. Can you hear me talking? Listen to my talking.

Given a prompt, they don’t write about it. Asked to read what they have written during our prompt-writing time and they don’t refer to their notes, or if they do refer to their notes, it is only briefly to say something to the effect of, “I didn’t have time to edit this.” I also didn’t have time to edit, but it wouldn’t be a writing group if we all just sat around telling stories. It would be a summer camp, and there would be s’mores.

I have writing goals, but they are the equivalent of an email asking for more information about a toothbrush.

“My goal is to write 150 words this week.” Let’s be clear, I’m glad you have a goal, and I hope you achieve it, but we might not be in the same line of work. I think in 1000 word chunks that have a beginning, middle, and an end. It has taken eighty-three words, so far, to describe your goal of writing 150 words. It is that simple. Although, it was Hemingway who wrote a full story in six words. “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Maybe you are on to something.

I am only going to share crappy writing at the last minute and you can fix it for me. M’Kay?

My least favorite personality in the group and the reason I no longer have a group. A group of any type, to work properly, needs a measure of respect. I respect your time and provide my best work for feedback and give it to you with plenty of time to digest. I expect the same in return. Don’t send me a document minutes before the meeting littered with typos and random thoughts. I will tear you apart.

So I left and am hereby group-less. Plus, the conversation on pubic hair trimming seemed out of line.

I wish I could stop writing and do something that wasn’t so demoralizing. Fishing. I wish I could fish instead of needing to write.

And this one is me. Writing is soul-crushing before it is invigorating. I’m still in the soul-crushing phase and swimming for dear life. Yet, I sit at my computer each day and pound out words and ideas. Many get deleted. Some get sent out. Some appear here.

I am grateful to all the members of groups I have frequented. I grew as a writer being around people of different styles, genres, competencies, and commitment levels. I may not know how to fish, but I can put a sentence together and convey an idea. My soul is pre-crushed, so I am stronger.