In the past I joined all kinds of assorted groups in hopes of learning something important. I took part in a dream group, a journal writing group, a woman’s group, a belly dance group, an improv acting group  and a writers group along with others.

I did take away quite a lot of knowledge and personal growth depending on the group and the instructor of the group. I tried attending groups where I had to pay a facilitator or teacher to teach the group. I also attended groups composed of my peers where we were doing it for fun, led it ourselves and didn’t have to pay anyone.

In college I had to take part in a writers group that was part of my full course of classes, what they called a ‘program’ at my college. This was a journal writing shop that was led by a highly skilled instructor. But I did also notice that she heavily utilized a book about how to lead yourself on a journal writing journey.

When I was done with school and moved to a city, this gave me an idea. I was composing a lot of poetry plus short, true stories and by that time I had tried out a bunch of different types of support groups for writing. I didn’t want to pay anyone to be in a writers group at that time because I couldn’t afford to.

I asked a few of my friends if they wanted to build our own group together. We would get together once a week at a local café and choose writing exercises from several good books.

Three of us ended up doing this for more than a year. Everyone else quit, but we all liked it enough and got enough diversity from it that we just wanted to keep on working. We tried a lot of different types of writing and we all felt that our writing skills developed in leaps and bounds from trying different things plus getting feedback from one another.

It was fun, plus if we didn’t feel that much like writing we could always just talk to each other and drink coffee. I became much closer with these friends than I expected to, and we maintained a friendship beyond writing after schedules changed and we determined not to continue on with the group.

One of the lessons I learned from this was that selecting an activity that you usually have to pay money to learn and facilitating it yourself is both fun and effective. And it can have extra benefits such as adding interest to the rest of your life and increasing friendships.

Most people I know have tried to write something sometime in their lives.  Almost everybody has at least done a school creative writing assignment or tried to write an obituary for a loved one, or some other type of writing.  I like to experiment with the different search engines available on the Internet to find writing.  I have located an online writer or two who I really learned something from.  The best way to do this is to search writing sites where people can publish their writing online.  There are some really great sites such as these around.

Email is used so much these days that for a while I thought it was overused.  People at work would send emails instead of walking down the hall to tell you something.  I understood after a while that this was to make a history of work events in case anything needed to be backed up.  I guess being an online writer and using email like that can be very useful.  If there is ever a work related dispute, email can show times and dates that things occurred plus show the information.  Chat programs don’t work that way and so I was told that if I ever wanted to document anything formally to do it over email and not to use chat programs.

I worked for one large software company where they have their own chat program and almost all of the employees there are chatting constantly to other workers in the huge room while they work.  This is frowned on of course but tons of people get away with it.  It can’t really be tracked apparently.  When I was testing before my testing lead who worked in a different building used to harass me over this chat program.  Or that was how I saw it.  I wondered how he ever got any work done if he spent so much time writing his employees over chat.  Outside of being an obsessive way some people try to combat their work boredom, being an online writer has a lot of uses these days.  You can publish creative writing, send emails, chat, or otherwise keep in touch.

As a writer, the online writing community is an important source of encouragement and feedback.  Feedback is the breakfast of champions.  But there are times when feedback is negative.  When you find a particular online writing community forum or site that becomes like a family to you, it can feel especially hurtful.  Sometimes negative feedback is worthy of your most honest consideration.  Other times it is just unkind ranting and projections of the irresponsible and immature.

As an online writer, you are tuned into words and probably a mite bit more emotionally sensitive than a non-artist type.  So you may take verbal and written criticism a little hard.  As wonderful and helpful as the world of the internet is, online communication presents a double edged sword that makes misunderstanding and offense much more likely on line.

On one hand, people writing alone don’t have the natural filters that come with being face to face.  Have you ever written an angry letter that spells out exactly what you think is wrong with someone else’s behavior, and then decided to talk in person and found that somehow you were able to find words to say the same thing more diplomatically in person?  It’s ironic because in writing we have more time to think. But face to face, we are fully in touch with our natural human instinct not to harm each other (or to try to avoid the anger we might get in return.  On line, people say whatever they want because in writing it seems less severe to the writer, and there is less fear of natural consequences. You can always walk away from the computer. Less so with a yelling person right in front of you!

Sadly, though words can seem less biting to the writer, they usually seem more biting to the reader.  With words on a page, there is always a range of affect that the reader can interpret.  Unfortunately, for whatever reason, we often seem to imagine the worst possible intentions and tone of voice.  We’ve all experienced that emotionally charged topics are better handled in person.

But this limitation of online writing communities turns out to be a blessing in disguise.  The thing written communication has going for it is that you get to think before you react and choose your words carefully.  If you do this, you can use online criticism as an opportunity to enhance your self-awareness, communication skills, conflict resolution skills, and writing skills.

Watch yourself imagining the tone of voice and intention in what you are reading. Practice trying on a range of possibilities.  Reflect on how your readers may read your characters or narration. Remember that these strangers on line could be anyone.  They may very well be people that you wouldn’t take seriously for an instant if you met them.  Practice getting that thick skin that is much needed for artists.  This tends to come with practice getting rejected over and over and over.  Rejection and criticism can become a non-event when you’re used to it, especially if you also have your share of accolades, friendships, and support.  Notice how often our criticisms are only projections and reflections of ourselves.  Develop an attitude that the criticism may be well founded or not.  Worth considering because everything that could possibly make your writing better is worth considering, not because the criticizer has any particular insight.  Maybe they do, maybe they don’t.  If you are willing to try on any and all ideas, then you can comfortably reject those that you know don’t fit.