You become more prolific.
When you write in community you keep an appointment with yourself that inspires your writing in solitude.
You receive encouragement, education and support.
Other writers identify what works in the writing, share insights, and understand rejection.
Your writing craft will improve.
When you identify what works in the writing of others, you teach or remind yourself to include it in your own writing.
You can find a mentor and be a mentor.
Have people who are ahead of you on the journey, beside you on the journey, and behind you on the journey.
You build community.
Writing often reveals universal themes and creates compassion.
“Everyone is a writer. You are a writer. All over the world, in every culture, human beings have carved into stone, written on parchment, birch bark, or scraps of paper, and sealed into letters—their words. Those who do not write stories and poems on solid surfaces tell them, sing them, and, in so doing, write them on the air. Creating with words is our continuing passion. We dream stories; we make up stories, poems, songs, and tell them to ourselves. All alone, we write.
We also write with others. Every time we open our door at the end of a workday and say, “You'll never believe what that [bleep] said to me today …” we create story. “I was minding my own business, and he got right into my face! and then he said …” Already we are creating character, voice, suspense—story. It may not be committed to paper, but the artist, the writer, is at work.”
Writing Alone and With Others by Pat Schneider
