(Self Promotion) About Writing Groups

I'm a real big fan of writing groups. After I graduated from college, I co-ran "The WordHungry Workshop"--a writing group for English-major aspirant High schoolers. That was one of the best summers, writing-wise of my life. And during that time, I realized that Writing Groups were the way to go when you don't have the regular stimulation of an ongoing educational program. So, today's blog entry will be about the two writing groups that I'm currently involved with. Thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever to set one up--Google Groups, Yahoo Groups, or even something like Wikipages are all great locations to pick out as a place to start your own group.

As some of you may know, last year I started up a writing group for fellow students at Spalding called SWING (Spalding Writing is not a Group). The whole idea is for the group to be a sort of writing community meeting ground, where we can share creative endeavors, post information, all kinds of stuff, really. SWING members have shared ECEs, given feedback on stories and poems. We've run some small contests there, and posted a lot of useful information on writerly tools--places to submit, programs to use, job postings etc. It's pretty much a catch-all writer's group, and if you're a Spalding student and interested, shoot me an email and I'll send you an invite to the group.

Recently, Rod Dixon, Dave Harrity and I set up our own group. The Warrior Poet Writing Group. Rod came up with the initial idea--to establish a writing group that regularly explores both creative and academic elements of literature beyond the realm of academia. The idea is that we each take turns teaching a book, short story, poem, whatever to the other members of the group. We then, in turn also write a creative piece based off of our discussion of that author. Our goal is to broaden our literary horizons by attacking the world of literature from multiple angles: creative and critical. We also hope to be able to use our experience in the group to aid us in the classroom by helping us learn to become better teachers, thinkers, writers. Finally, we have some longshot distance goals for the group: attend writing conferences together, start up a Literary journal reflecting our views towards the literary world, and to create several public projects relating to reading, understanding, and writing literature. The above listed website will be where we host all of our goings ons, public info and the like. Our book discussions and creative endeavors, however, will be made available upon request.