Hello writers! I hope that your summer is going well and that you are giving yourself a restful break.

On today’s episode I’m going to be talking about how important it is to be part of writing groups.

This is always true, but especially so when you’re working on your first book.

Sure, we all know (or think we know) what they are and what they’re for, but it’s helpful to break it all down so you can use them most effectively.

Why Do You Need One? (Or Two or Three…)

So let’s start with why you need at least one writing group.

The basic reason is that humans are social animals, and we need a combination of emotional support, practical feedback, and external accountability to get things done in a timely manner.

Of course, people fall onto a spectrum in terms of their own levels of internal motivation. But even the most internally driven people do better when others are counting on them for something.

How many of you race to finish things the day or two before a big deadline? I’m not saying that this is the healthiest way to accomplish things, as it’s pretty stressful, but you do get it done.

My coaching clients tell me all the time that they focus much more on their writing in the few days before they meet with me because they know I will ask them about their progress.

But even more than giving external accountability, writing a book is a notoriously lonely journey for most authors.

Working together with others who are invested in you and your project can create a sense of camaraderie, community, and—most importantly, belonging—that can be very hard to muster up on your own over long stretches of time.

So let’s talk about the different kinds of writing groups and why you might want to form at least one of each.

I believe that there are really only two kinds of academic writing groups: the first is the co-working group and the second is the feedback-and-accountability group.

All About Co-Working Groups

Let’s start by talking about co-working groups. It’s just like it sounds: you find an agreed upon time with one or more other people and then you write together for a scheduled period.

This could be either in-person on online. Both work well.

Meeting on Zoom is great for folks who aren’t in the same location or who don’t have much flexibility in their schedules, like parents of young kids.

Alternatively, meeting in person can be hugely motivating because you can choose a cool, interesting, or inspiring place to work.

One thing I’ve noticed is that working in a beautiful place can lead to really beautiful writing!

And, even though it can be much easier to roll out of bed and start writing in your pjs, sometimes it feels really good to put on some real clothes, brush your hair, and leave the house to talk with people face-to-face.

So what’s the best way to run a co-working group?

First, you need to find some people who are open to the idea and have space in their schedules.

You can even just find one other person to work with, but make sure that this person is generally reliable and you can count on them to show up.

Next, to get the most out of your group, the UNC Chapel Hill Writing Center offers some useful tips you should consider ahead of time that I’m about to share. These include things like:

• Figure out how often the group will meet. Will it be once a week, twice a week, every other week? And for how long? I might recommend two hours to start with, and then you can adjust.
• Where will the group meet? Will it be at a place like a coffee shop, a library, a lounge, or on Zoom?
• Will one person be in charge of organizing these meetings?
• What level of commitment do you expect? What happens if people don’t attend regularly?
• What will you do during the meeting? How much time will you spend socializing? (This is really important to think about because otherwise your group can turn into a venting session with little time spent on work.)
• Will you discuss general writing problems, check in about the week’s writing activities, state writing goals for the coming week?

So once you’ve made some decisions about how you’re going to co-work, you can get down to business!

There is really no one way to run these groups, but here’s some suggestions you could try for a two-hour-long work session: First, everyone go around and state what specific task you’ll be working on for the next hour (or you could split that up into two pomodoros). You might want to state a few words about how you’re feeling about doing this task and why it’s important to do now.

You all set timers for one hour and, if you’re online, mute yourselves while you’re working. Be sure to turn off your email, your text notifications, and any social media so you can focus just on your task. Have any snacks and drinks handy as well, and put up a sign on your door that says you are writing and can’t be disturbed.

When the timer goes off, come back together and check in about how things are going and how you’re feeling about the work thus far. Do you need to readjust your writing goal, take a 5-10 minute break, have something to drink or eat, use the bathroom, or stretch.

State your goal for the second hour and do it all over again

At the end of the second hour, sum up your progress quickly and state a writing goal that you’d like to achieve before you meet up again. Then stick around and socialize if you can!

How to Run a Feedback-and-Accountability Group

So that’s the co-working group. Now let’s talk about the second kind of writing group: the feedback-and-accountability group.

These are groups where you share your work-in-progress and give and receive critical feedback.

When I was a junior faculty member, I took part in multiple different feedback-and-accountability groups at the same time.

Two were with other early career scholars who were also revising their dissertations into book manuscripts.

Of the two, one was with grad school colleagues who were living in the same city as me, while the other was with junior faculty members from nearby universities who I met at a networking meeting for feminist researchers.

In addition to that, I shared work with a qualitative research-focused group of colleagues in my department on campus for a few years.

I also established good working relationships with two senior colleagues whose work I admired at other schools who had overlapping research interests with me. With them, I exchanged chapters or article drafts on a more ad-hoc basis.

All of this sharing was great for me in terms of creating clear deadlines and reducing the feelings of isolation I had while working on my book.

And of course, the consistent feedback I received made my work so much better and gave me new directions to pursue when I was feeling stuck.

So how do you create one of these groups, and how should you run it?

For me, the best fit with my work and writing schedule was a group of three people total in which we would get together once per month and one person would share something like a book proposal, a chapter draft, or a grant application.

We would spend about an hour giving detailed feedback and then often follow it up with dinner or drinks somewhere, which helped solidify the social support we all needed.

When it is your turn to share, there are two key things you need to keep in mind.

The first is to give others enough time to read your work. Peoples’ schedules are incredibly busy and going over a chapter in a detailed way can take an hour or longer.

Try to send your piece to people at least 10 days before you meet, although I know that can be hard.

The second thing you need to do is to convey in your email the specific type of feedback you would like to receive.

Are there particular places you’re feeling stuck? Do you want to know if the argument makes sense? Are you concerned about the theoretical framing or the logical flow of the piece?

On another note, sometimes people wonder whether they need to form a group with other people who share your research interests.

I would say that it’s useful, but not really necessary to have major overlap in your research areas, as long as everyone uses similar theories or methods.

I’ve been part of long-standing groups where I really didn’t have much background knowledge about other people’s topics.

Sometimes that can lead to the best comments because you’re giving feedback as an educated, interested reader rather than as an expert.

And ultimately, we want our books to be read by both audiences, right?

And finally, here are three other pieces of advice for getting the most out of your feedback-and-accountability groups

1. Be conscious of how you receive feedback and try not to take it personally. This can be so difficult to do sometimes because academics are taught to conflate ourselves with our ideas and our projects.

I encourage you to intentionally try to separate these things. You are your own person who is a channel and conduit for amazing ideas that are meant to be out in the world.

The comments you receive from your writing group is likely the same feedback you would receive from reviewers, but probably kinder.

Always give others benefit of the doubt that the constructive criticism they provide is meant to help your ideas improve so they can be published and add to the dialogue in your field.

2. Don’t get TOO much feedback on your work.

I know that many of you are not in danger of this, and the greater challenge will be to put together a sustainable set of writing groups.

But I am familiar with folks that have everyone in their life read and give feedback on their work. This includes multiple writing groups, grad school advisors, current mentors, as well as their friends and family members.

You can reach a point where you really have too many cooks in the kitchen and need to trust your intuition about your own work.

3. This leads into the third point, which is that you ultimately need to decide what feedback you will implement and what you can ignore.

Regardless of whether the comments are from your writing group members or from article or book reviewers, just because someone wants you to change, add, or subtract something doesn’t mean you have to do it.

For anyone with people-pleasing tendencies, it can be even harder to decide which direction to go with your work. And for that, I would encourage you to ask yourself, “If other people’s opinions did not matter, what would I do?”

And honor the answer that comes up.

So I hope that gives you some good ideas for how to create and run effective writing groups.

When you have the support and accountability, you will not only write more, but you’ll feel a lot better while doing it. And who doesn’t want that?

Talk to you next time!