Community (from thewildwriters.com)

My friend and critique partner, Laura, wrote about community and how it helps as we wrestle with questions like Am I a real writer? Don’t “real” writers earn money? How can I justify spending the money to take another class/attend another conference/fill-in-the-blank when I haven’t actually published anything yet? I hope you find her answer as inspiring as I do:

Community

The long haul

For many writers, especially those who started seriously pursuing publication decades ago, the Holy Grail, the mark of being a “real” writer, is having a book published by one of the big New York publishing houses. Being a writer who’s been seriously pursuing this marker of success for twelve years, with a first attempt at it some twenty-five years ago, there have been many times along the way when I’ve felt like a failure. For the last four years people have been telling me I’m “so close.”

I doubt I would have stuck with it this long, no matter how strong the calling, if I hadn’t had critique groups along the way. I co-founded a group twenty years ago that offered primarily support and encouragement, as we were all beginning to learn our craft. Several years later, after finding the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SCBWI, I helped to start another group focused on children’s writing, which led me to the Wild Writers.

To read the rest of this post, please visit my critique group’s cooperative blog at www.thewildwriters.com.