Who is your community? The more I teach, the more I realize how important community is for writers. The world at large will not support your writing and doesn’t care if you ever get a word down on paper. Your writing will make your family and friends nervous and anxious because they’re afraid you’re going to spill the beans and expose their life. And then they’re afraid you won’t, that they’re not interesting enough for you to write about, you don’t care enough about them. It’s a non-win situation. It’s best to not even talk about your writing to your family. And for God’s sake, don’t let them read it.

You need support, you need to find people either in person or on-line who want to write, love books, who will cheer you on. You need positive people to hang out with. And sometimes it can take work to find them. As I wrote before, the best place is in a writing class. Or start your own writing group. Here are some guidelines for reading in your own workshop:

• Be generous, honest and specific when you critique someone’s work.
• Take notes as the work is read so your feedback can be detailed.
• Don’t veer off into personal comments – stick to the writing.
• Don’t try to rewrite the piece for the author, find out his or her intentions.
• Frame your comments with:
  • "I don’t understand…."
  • "I want to know more about…"
  • "I’m not sure what the point is…."
  • "I really liked xyz because…"
  • "xyz made me feel…."

To Do: Sign up for a class or find one positive friend who wants to write (or a group of them) and share your work on a weekly basis, or go on-line and find a group (try our own Courage & Craft Writing Room) And also write to an author you admire. Community is about connection. I just emailed Samantha Dunn to tell her that I read Faith in Carlos Gomez on a plane Friday night, absolutely loved it, and laughed out loud and also cried. She emailed me back. It was just a few minutes in the middle of the day but it made me feel connected to another writer, part of a community. Read Carolyn See’s wonderful book, Making a Literary Life for more ideas about creating your own community.