​Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officiallyInsecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG

And we’re revving up IWSG Day to make it more fun and interactive! Every month, we'll announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say. 

September 7 Question: How do you find the time to write in your busy day?
The awesome co-hosts for the September 7 posting of the IWSG will be C. Lee McKenzie, Rachel Pattison,Elizabeth Seckman, Stephanie Faris, Lori L MacLaughlin,and Elsie Amata! 

We're also announcing the details of the annual IWSG Anthology Contest on September 7!

Wow, how does a writer find time to write? A tough question and therefore a good one! Sometimes I think writer's block is often a  result of a too tightly wound writer's clock--the one that tic-tocks with loud and often disruptive staccato notes when forced to write if, when, where and how time in a busy, hectic schedule allows or demands.  

Personally, I am incredibly busy and when you add ADHD to that, I have to add "pressure" or "obligation" or "deadline" to force myself to FOCUS on a writing project to completion, though I always have more than one project in the works in order to keep my restless right/left brain mind juggle satisfied. 

To be more specific, I belong to Weekend Writing Warriors, an online weekly fb and Twitter group that posts 8-10 sentences of a WIP for feedback and comments every week.  It 'forces' me to write at least that much in a current WIP, right? And, if you're in there writing a paragraph or so, then you might as well write....  

I feel really guilty that I have missed two of those in the last couple of months, because I have been too overwhelmed with other writing obligations. But, that falls under the category of setting priorities and making professional decisions. For example, I had a publication deadline and I have a short story coming out in an October Horror Anthology, so edits had to take priority.  I could have "posted" something, but I don't like to do that if I don't have time to read anyone else's work. 

For those of you who like to write short stories, Tell-Tale Publishing (the Horror Anthology I have a story coming out with in October) is having its annual Halloween Horror Party and Scariest Story, Vincent Price Award, Contest in October. Get Ready! The winner will have their story in next year's anthology and get their story on the cover, like last year's winner, The Keeper's Secret....(see cover below) Our own Alex C. was a judge last year!

​Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officiallyInsecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time. Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG

And we’re revving up IWSG Day to make it more fun and interactive! Every month, we'll announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say. 

AUGUST 3RD QUESTION: What was your very first piece of writing as an aspiring writer? Where is it now? Collecting dust or has it been published?

The awesome co-hosts for the August 3 posting of the IWSG will be Tamara Narayan, Tonja Drecker, Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Lauren @ Pensuasion, Stephen Tremp, and Julie Flanders! ​

The first thing I ever wrote as an aspiring adult writer was an historical vampire romance, set at the court of Peter the Great. I wrote it decades ago. I researched it, and wrote the entire thing first on a typewriter and then on my first computer, that actually crashed because the hard drive couldn't take the amount of  "data" I had input during a 16-hour writing session. Oh, times and technology they sure have changed.

I was speaking to a young sales girl the other day in a store and she didn't know what a dot matrix printer was and didn't understand how there ever could have been a single computer so large when I first studied computer science that it took up a whole room that had to be air conditioned year round in Michigan to keep it cooled off. And they wonder why updating our websites drive us  old "geezers" who know nothing about computer technology crazy? Perhaps young people forget that we've learned a whole lot "more" technology in our lifetimes than has yet to be invented in theirs....

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officiallyInsecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time. Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.
Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG
​
And we’re revving up IWSG Day to make it more fun and interactive! Every month, we'll announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. These questions may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Include your answer to the question in your IWSG post or let it inspire your post if you are struggling with something to say. 

JULY 6 QUESTION: What's the best thing someone has ever said about your writing?
The awesome co-hosts for the July 6 posting of the IWSG will be Yolanda Renee, Tyrean Martinson, Madeline Mora-Summonte , LK Hill, Rachna Chhabria, and JA Scott! 

Wow, today's question really hit me. As an editor I spend a lot of time saying things about a lot of people's writing, and I often wonder if writers know just how difficult and often lonely it can be on the other side of the red pen.

As an author, and fellow critique partner who tries to openly discuss observations, I know how it feels to have your favorite scene, phrase or description cut or ignored.

​What is the best thing anyone has ever said to me? I wish I had written that! of course. That's why I try to note it in a manuscript margin, no matter how busy I am, from time to time.  A simple, "Well said,  great scene, love that!, nice!" goes so far toward building back up the writing confidence of an author whose manuscript has been redlined or marked up with a dozen notations of revisions to be made.  

How do I know? I'm an author, and as an editor I'm probably even more insecure as an author wondering if  people critique me with unfair (however secret) overinflated expectations.  As an author I sometimes need to have a sloppy, rough draft with brainstormed freewriting and choppy ideas.

I wear a lot of hats. Sometimes they get baggy and slip a bit, from being changed too often. But the more I wear them, the more comfortable they are, and the more they become an integral part of my eclectic personality...

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officiallyInsecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time. Be sure to link to this page and display the badge in your post.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG

The awesome co-hosts for the April 6 posting of the IWSG will be Megan Morgan, Chris Votey, Viola Fury,Christine Rains, Madeline Mora-Summonte, L.G. Keltner,Rachna Chhabria, and Patricia Lynne! 

I write quite a few reviews, and edit other people’s manuscripts every single week, but there are only a few blogs that I write just because I want to with any regularity. Yes, I can see your eyes rolling, those that wonder what I dare define as regular. Hey, just remember that everyone has problems you know nothing about.

Two groups I try to push myself to blog in are groups in which writers must post excerpts of their WIP. Why? To force me to create an excerpt so that I work on my WIP instead of someone else’s. And I swear I wonder sometimes why I bother posting in one of them because all they seem to care about is how many sentences you write, not what you write. And all I care about is that I DID write. I regress.

Don’t get me wrong, I love to read other author’s works. Isn’t that what they say all great writers must do? Read. Read. Read. Of course, but at what point does it become an excuse to avoid facing critique on one’s own work? Or perhaps even the lack of critique?

Since moving across the country, one of the things I miss most is the fun, eclectic group of 8 POTL women who made up my critique group. We used to meet once a month for plot brainstorming, critiquing, laughing and whatever else was happening, be it book signings, guild meetings, wine tasting tours, or tarot card reading character development sessions--or just life, such as personal events or problems that came up. Oh, how I miss that food for the writer’s soul.

It’s been so long since I wrote anything substantive that my writing “buddies” don’t even know I’m writing again, and don’t even know to “follow” my writing fb pages or blogs or comment on them, or…sigh. Who can blame them? I have no one to blame but myself. The writer in me has forgotten to send out invites to my friends letting them know the right side of my brain is alive and well, though it may be living in AZ rather than MI.
​
My writing has suffered for many reasons since I moved here, but I have not finished a novel since I arrived, and I can’t help but admit the lack of writing comradery is probably a major reason. So today I  sliced a juicy organic tomato, some smoky gouda cheese, and layered them on thin slices of feta/spinach/onion bread from Beyond Bread, opened a bottle of my favorite Late Harvest Riesling and wrote an entire chapter in my WIP—and all that before I painted a modern abstract acrylic on canvas “Sunflowers Swim in Lilacs”. How’s that for right-brain regeneration?