The Importance of Writing Friendships by Sydney Salter

Otis offering writerly support.

Our writing group first met in the children's section of our local Barnes & Noble. We sat at the small round tables critiquing each other's writing while our toddlers ran amok. Eventually we graduated to the cafe, meeting every Tuesday morning, and our group expanded and contracted as new writers arrived and others gave up the discouraging grind. Some of us started to sell our writing to magazines and book publishers. 

Now I chat with one of those writers on the phone every Tuesday morning. She moved away, but we still talk about our writing accomplishments (or not) and our plans for the upcoming week. 

Writers need writer friends. No one else understands the arduous process of preparing submissions, the concept of a good rejection or how hard it can be to muddle through the middle of a story. 

During the pandemic, I lost so many aspects of the strong writing community I had built, and it's been hard to rebuild. A couple of writers stopped writing, so we stopped meeting for weekly writing dates. Another group of us met for dinner once a month, but only outside in the summer months as the pandemic started to wane. We got out of the monthly habit, so our dinners are sporadic now. Like writing itself, writing friendships also seem to depend upon cultivating good habits. 

In 2025 I'm going to continue to foster my writing friendships. I've signed up for a local SCBWI writing retreat. I'm going to invite writer friends to lunch. I'm going to go writing in cafes again. 

The writing life is hard and should not be done alone.