Planting Literary Seeds: Growing a Community

Growing a writing community isn’t easy. You start slow, you start small. A few writers gather in a dusty library room or a small corner of a bookstore. Maybe you trade manuscripts, or read passages aloud. Or you exchange personal stories of rejections, maybe even an acceptance or two. With luck, the group grows. More people join. Newbies, pros. All looking for someone who understands.

The great thing about life is that you never know where a path may take you. The best case scenario? Small intimate gatherings swell to large groups. Members exchange hard-won wisdom, new markets, more rejections, but even better, more acceptances.

As a long-time member (and currently president) of the South Jersey Writers’ Group, I have seen new members come through our doors, perhaps a little nervous, eyeing us up like prey wandering into a room full of predators and I have to laugh a…