I recently started a writing group in my area. We critiqued each other’s stuff for the first time earlier this month, and I have to say that it was a great experience. It got me moving on my writing and should make it so that I write more regularly (creatively, not necessarily on my blogs ).

In February, a couple of us (the Founders) got together to come up with guidelines for our group.

Dave Farland had sent out several emails last year about writing groups, so I went through those again and pulled out the good nuggets of information.

In any case, we set up some rules about how we’re going to run the thing and our expectations. Basically, we expect people to write something new every month instead of just rehashing the same old thing again and again. We also don’t want critiques to get out of hand and so will use something similar to Orson Scott Card’s bootcamp method (which I believe is also used at Odyssey and/or Clarion). Everyone will get a turn and there will not be any cross-talking or commenting by the author.

We also decided to include a short writing exercise at the beginning of each one so that we can improve our craft and get our brains working.

Finally, we decided (for various reasons that I will not enumerate at the present time) to call our group The Point Writing Group.

We are open to anyone who is serious about writing and improving themselves.

So, if you live in northern Utah county or southern Salt Lake county (in Utah, of course), then we’d be happy to have you.