Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone: Join a writers’ group

Hi guys! Welcome back to Too Many Books to Count! I’m so glad you stopped by. We’ve reached the last week in our series on getting outside our comfort zones, which means we’ve reached the end of August… which is really confusing, because didn’t June just start a couple days ago?

In any case, we’ve been having a lot of fun this month, pushing ourselves outside our comfort zones, getting ourselves to step outside those lovely little boxes we made to keep ourselves safe and warm and comfy, knowing that we know what we’re doing and that we’re good at it. And you know what? I think we’ve grown a lot, this month. At the very least, I know I have. I’ve discovered a lot of things about myself, while writing this series. And that’s pretty darn cool, you know?

Today, I’m going to talk to you about something that I’ve recently delved into. I honestly didn’t know it was a thing, until pretty recently… but I’ve gotten a lot out of it, and I think you will, too.

Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone: Join a writers’ group

How is this getting outside your comfort zone, you ask? Well, it involves interacting with people you don’t know, and interacting with them fairly frequently. And for someone as introverted as I am, that’s not a very easy thing to do. In fact, I just really don’t like doing it. Which is why I wanted to talk to you about this.

Personally, I joined a group on Facebook, called Flinch Free Fiction (until recently, it’d been called Clean Indie Reads—I like the new name much better). It’s a group of authors who write clean fiction, fiction that doesn’t involve cursing or swearing or gratuitous sexual encounters, and if you know me and my writing, then you know that’s right up my alley. I write clean fiction. I write fiction that won’t make you flinch. So this group made sense for me to join. You might need to find a different one, for yourself, but the point is to go out and find one. There’s this lovely tool called Google, that should help you with that. ;-)

This group, for me, is a way to get myself to think differently. It’s a constant reminder that I need to be growing and learning. It’s a way for me to share my triumphs and failures with others, a way for me to help others who might just be learning how to get into this thing called writing—and it’s also a great place to get advice, if I’m feeling stuck at any point. For me, this group is something I didn’t know I needed, until I joined it and I realized how much I needed this thing.

So today, I’m challenging you to try it.

But I’m not challenging you to try it, for yourself. See, most of us at least have an inkling of what we’re doing, when it comes to writing. We have an idea of what we like and what we don’t like. We know what we like to read and what we don’t like to read. We know what sentences sound good and what ones don’t. We know a little bit, which means we know more than someone else.

So I’m challenging you, not just to join a group so you’ll have a community to be a part of, but to join a group so you can be the one there helping people, giving out advice or answering a question when you know the answer. I’m challenging you to be social, even if it’s only online—because you’ll grow, both as a writer and as a person, when you do.

Trust me, it’s something that I’m learning to do, every day. I’m not amazing at it, yet. I comment on posts when I know the answer or when I’ve something to say that I think might be helpful, but that’s not always as often as I know it should be. I need to be more involved. I know it. But it’s something I’m working on, and something I’m growing in. Something that’s (you guessed it) pulling me outside my comfort zone.

And it will for you too, once you give it a try.

[love]

{Rani Divine}