Guidelines for Running a Group

“Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.”

Melinda Haynes

 

In any writing group, we are our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers.

Our job is to write. To fill that page AND to listen deeply to our fellow writers. Writing is an intense, vulnerable, and empowering activity. Because writing is all of these things, any writing group or community:

MUST be a team, a good tribe, no matter what your personal differences are.

MUST be founded on the principles of respect and integrity.

How does this translate into forming and running a writing group? Each writer commits to attend with an attitude of tolerance, patience, and compassion.

Each writer keeps the other writers’ confidentiality—what is said in the group, stays in the group.

Writers do not tell each other how they are “supposed” to feel about something.

The most powerful thing writers in groups like these do is to bear witness, to listen deeply to the murmurs, songs, rants, rages, grief, and imaginary worlds of their fellow writers.