The following  words, could well apply to the Randwick Writers Group, which I convene fortnightly. All members of this group have improved their writing by leaps and bounds (excuse the cliché), one has been accepted for publication this year, and two have had interest from literary agents.  Through rigorous feedback, following our guidelines (praise first, then constructive critique, finishing with global) we four are constantly motivated to keep writing.

Share Your Work with Other Writers by Ali Luke

In my own writing life, there’s nothing that’s helped me more than having a circle of writer friends to share work-in-progress with.

Setting my own deadlines for finishing a scene or chapter leaves far too much room for renegotiation: committing to a weekly or monthly meeting means I have to meet an external deadline, one that involves other people who’re counting on me to get my work done.

Sharing your work could also mean:

• Posting regularly (e.g. once a week) on your blog.
• Asking a spouse or friend to read what you’ve written each week.
• Paying for an editor to review your manuscript.
• Publishing excerpts from your novel-in-progress online, perhaps on a writing-related forum.
• Emailing each session’s work to a writing buddy.

It could even be as simple as sharing your day’s or week’s word count with your friends on Facebook, rather than sharing your actual writing.

If you’ve already established a strong writing habit in your life, I’d love to hear what’s worked well for you – do you have an extra trick to add to my list?

And if you’re still working on that writing habit, drop a comment below to say which tip you’ll be trying out this week.

About the author: 

Ali Luke blogs about the art, craft and business of writing at Aliventures

Re-blogged from: Write to Done