A Little Nothing

This journal exists so I can comment on other people's bloggers, and so I can post things on Amy's wiki. No other reason. No updates, none of that. The MSVWA news and info has been moved to http://www.msvwa.net, for the time being. My own website is http://www.brittanymaresh.com and may or may not forward you to http://www.cityofexiles.com (which is also my website).

-Bri

Mat-Su Valley Writers' Alliance

It's been a while since I last posted, but it's needless to say the group has changed quite a bit. There are four of us, routinely, and we're all getting a lot more unified, genre and talent-wise.

Holly Lisle (genius) has offered up much advice about writing groups: Obtain a good one. She offers some traits to look for, so I thought I'd consider us, according to her guidelines, to see how awesome we are:

• We have clear goals
  
• We have interest in the same type of writing (fantasy novel of all variety)
  
• We work, earlier in the day at least! Plus we do timed writes!
  
• There are standards for people criticizing critiquing each others works, though we critique on paper. It's not quite the same
  
• We're small enough that we don't have issues with troublemakers. That being said, NaNo Season, Summer always updates us on what Bri is NOT allowed to do to the newbies.
• We all share work, and all know what's going on with one another's pieces, mostly.
  
• Even when I pick on Jean, and she drives me crazy, yeah, we're all stupidly excited to see each other on Saturdays. Check.

She also outlines a few types of writing groups. Don't worry. We're (basically) the good kind.

Direction and Dedication

Every Saturday, the four or five writers who actively participated in NaNoWriMo in my city get together to sit down together and write. We do thirty minutes of writing, and then count to see who wrote the most words, followed by forty-five minutes or so of conversation about writing, our stories, characters, and daily life. We do not critique each other's works. We do not share the writing it's self. We write. We chatter. We enjoy the company. It seems to me, this is a logical way to organize a group as diverse in ability and genera as ours. Something to think about, if you're in a group that is very far flung in ability and genera, where the only thing you all really have in common is that you're writing.