A great way to improve your writing and to make friends is to join or form a writing group.

What is a writing group? It is simply a group of people who meet periodically - every week or every month is common - for the purpose of supporting each other's writing. Some writing groups meet to write - in other words, they spend their time together doing writing exercises and perhaps reading them out loud. Other writing groups meet to discuss each other's writing. They exchange their pieces in advance, read them before the meeting, and offer their thoughts and suggestions for improvement at the meeting.

One big advantage of a writing group - compared with a writing class - is that a writing group is free. Another advantage is that writing groups often meet over a longer period of time than a writing class. For example, a class might be finished in eight or twelve weeks. Writing groups often go on for years. I have found that, while I was often nervous about sharing my writing in a class, I grew more and more comfortable sharing my work with my writing group.

I first joined a writing group about four years ago, when I was struggling to write short stories. I had a vision of how I wanted each story to "land” with the reader, and I used my writing group to tell me whether the story landed the way I wanted. For a few years, my stories were generally off the mark. But gradually I got better at tailoring what I was doing to cause the reaction I wanted with my readers. At that point, my stories began to be published. I couldn't have achieved this without my writing group.

If you'd like to find an existing writing group to join, try asking the creative writing teachers at the nearest university, community college, or community arts program if they know of any existing groups. Your local librarian might also be a source of this information.

To form your own group, try asking friends and acquaintances if they know of other writers who might like to join. You can put up flyers locally and/or run a small ad in the newspaper. Your group can be dedicated only to a certain genre (such as nonfiction, or writing for children), or you can leave it open to all kinds of writers.

The members of your writing group don't need to be experienced writers in order for you to benefit. What you are really looking for are good readers - people who are at least somewhat familiar with the genre of writing you are doing, and who can give you their honest opinion.