Intro to Writers Group

Smyrna Writers met on Saturday, and as I was preparing for the session, it occurred to me that a lot of staff and folks in the community might not be aware of who we are and what we do.


Both Linebaugh and Smyrna have writers' groups. Rutherford Writers Ink meets the 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month at 10:00 in the board room. Smyrna Writers meets the second and last (not 4th, but last) Saturday of the month at 1:00 p.m. in the library conference room. I'm not as familiar with RWInk's members as I am Smyrna's, so I'll probably focus more on our group and our procedures and members. It'd be great if a Linebaugh staff person blogged about their group so we can learn! :-)


It's important for staff to know that our writers' group isn't a class. Although I am the facilitator, I don't teach or instruct or otherwise hold myself up as the grand poobah of all writerly knowledge. We meet, we share work, we critique each other, we help each other with everything from choosing character names to defeating the block. Because we're in the library, we can do research during the meeting. And we encourage each other. This is, perhaps, our most important function. The only thing that makes me different from the rest of the group is that I have the responsibility of keeping track of our activities and making sure that meetings go smoothly.

It took a couple of years to develop an active group! But we now have a core of regular members and lots of people who come a few times a year and communicate with us via our Yahoo! group when they can't be at the meetings. I have permission from some group members to profile them here so that our library staff can get to know them and, through them, discover the value of what we do.