The main reason to join a writers club is to network with other writers.
Please visit our Writers Forum, our online community for members
and all writers and a growing source
of information for contests, events, and other items of interest ot writers..
Okay, you’re a member, now what. You have joined because you are a writer or a wannabe. You’re looking for an association with others of your interests. You seek help with your writing (we can all use help). Even the most accomplished of writers need new and fresh ideas and our Networking portfolio begins the Club path that brings you in contact with both.
This portfolio consists of Critique Groups, Reading Groups, Club Mentoring, Specialty Expertise, and Educational Opportunities. Each intended to bring you in contact with those new ideas and, oh yes, to give us a few of your own.
Peer appraisal and critique will bring a view of your work you haven’t yet seen—one you may freely discharge or disregard. You will be exposed to other writers’ opinions about plot, character, description, construction, color, dialog, grammar and the rest and be invited to offer the same. You will find it enlightening, helpful, and motivating and we support groups working at all levels.
When asked about a book the usual answer has to do with enjoyment. A writer’s reading group, however, presents new and complex depths to plumb. To their advantage, reading writers may look for how-to techniques, style and the effective turn of a phrase. What produced such a popular interest or where did this author just flat fail? What pitfalls were avoided or scenes nicely coupled? Wasn’t that a clever twist—why that and why not this? Reading is cited as the best way to learn writing, and in a writers’ book discussion group, that concept can be stretched to its ultimate limits.
Sit with a experienced member, perhaps an officer or chair, and be helped to understand what club opportunities await you. You’re at a coffee shop with a warm slice of rhubarb pie and relaxed. It’s a amiable hour, and at the end, you will be acquainted with ways you may go about improving your writing, better enjoy Club activities and ambiance, participate in its governance; and know some of its prestigious legacy. Your questions will be answered then or later and, most important, we will know your interests and ideas—after all, the Club is you.
Each of us has led a life, most of us specialists in a field, all fields applicable to some writing—and we are collecting this expertise. Members having experience, they are willing to share, are noted in the newsletter, WritersTalk, and the ‘Writers Forum’ so that those of us writing scenes that touch that experience, may do so with authenticity—have the ‘blessing’ of an expert. Police work, aberrant personalities, office environments, people profiles and on. Use them! Sign up and be one!
Want to know how? Have a craving to know more about how? We have members who teach writing professionally—privately and through institutions. We also become aware of certain values in education outside of our membership—a big bang for your educational buck. These opportunities are promoted to serve you learning needs and ‘pointers’ to the best are available from the Networking Chair and listed in the ‘Writers Forum’.
All of these pieces of the Networking Portfolio are further defined in the ‘Writers Forum’ with pointers and contacts that help take you farther. If you have questions you would like to direct to the chair, send them to our networking chair, Sara Aurich, at networking@southbaywriters.com.
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