Writing is a solitary act, but it doesn’t have to be done in solitude and isolation.

A Zoom writing community (a.k.a. writing circle, writing group) is a space for writers to come together and write synchronously; it provides companionship and support, intellectual and emotional.

THE EVOLUTION OF WRITING COMMUNITIES

Famous writing groups through history have been the Bloomsbury group, begun in the early 1900s with the likes of Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster, and the Stratford-on-Odeon group established in the early 1920s in a Parisian bookshop with writers like Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Though once the exclusive domain of literary writers who would meet to exchange their writing and discuss their views on the craft of writing, the purpose of art, their weltschmerz and their weltanschauung, membership is no longer restricted to great literary writers and intellectuals.

Modern writing communities have formed around non-literary writers too – e.g., academics, hobbyists, bloggers, content writers.

This democratic inclusivity of writers from all fields has meant that giving feedback and discussions about the art of writing have come to a stop.

In their place, the modern writing community offers us a physical space in which to write together, synchronously. It helps hold our attention and commitment to our writing in an age of a million distractions. The physical presence of others keeps us from straying from our dreaded task of writing, to keep up the social pressure to conform, and to keep us in line.

 But with Covid-19, these writing communities have gone online. People are now writing on Zoom calls, in complete silence and with videos turned off. Where’s the companionship, the support? How is this enjoyable, or different from writing in isolation? And why do people keep coming back?

ADVANTAGES FOR ACADEMICS IN JOINING AN ONLINE WRITING COMMUNITY

““The writing community is EXTREMELY important to me. This is really changing the game for me. Thank you very very much.”

— Roberta Campos

Most important: Making calendar space for your writing. By committing to being part of a virtual writing community, you block out time in your calendar for your writing. You declare writing to be just as important as teaching and grading and meetings, mostly to yourself. It’s no longer neglected and a source of guilt. You are actively making time to write your research.

Second advantage: Using “Zoom” as an excuse for privacy. With entire families still locked down together, claiming time for your writing can seem like you have your priorities mixed up – homeschooling-cooking-cleaning-washing-drying-mopping-grading-teaching-meeting come first. Zoom calls, however, trump it all. And if you’re writing on a Zoom, nobody really needs to know that, right?

Third: Knowing that others are with us, feeling our writing pain. If alone, we might give up. But simply knowing that others are working with us pushes us through our mental pain. If we choose not to show up at all, we still know that we’re being missed. We are expected to attend. Missing that writing date is the equivalent of social shame, and shame is a strong motivator of action. A writing community helps keep us loyal and committed to our writing.

Fourth advantage: Networking with members located far and wide. You can cast your networking net further than you otherwise could have. Short of attending a conference or a professional event, it would be hard to imagine meeting such a variety of like-minded people.

Fifth treat: Finding extra hours in your working day. Because writing communities are hosted anywhere in the world, the timing could fall outside your usual productive work hours. But a late-night post-dinner writing session, or a 6 am one, squeezes out an extra two hours of hard concentration and work from our day that we didn’t think was possible.

Sixth benefit: Creating maximum efficiency. You could be cleaning the toilet until two minutes before your session starts and you can turn up in your rags. No judgement. No set-up time. You can go from writing on a Zoom to an academic seminar on a Zoom in less than a minute, and still possibly in your rags.

Seventh heaven: Reducing set-up costs after a break. A weekly commitment to a writing group ensures you stay connected to your writing. Longer stretches of neglect make your own words seem alien, obliging you to restart from the beginning. Regular writing means you waste less time in setting up and recalling where you were when you left off.

In the publish or perish game, can you afford to leave behind the 7 fabulous advantages of the writing community?