Writers Groups To Improve Your Writing

I’ve been in some pretty odd writers groups over the years. I was studying creative writing in college and when you are concentrating thoroughly on a subject sometimes constructive branching out is needed. I did some pretty weird assignments. In one of these writers groups we wrote poems in the expressive style of Russell Edson. This definitely helped individuals to come up with some interesting poetry. What I thought about Russell Edson’s poetry is that he makes poems that are like Gary Larson’s sketches in words. Trying to write in this style definitely gives you a different eye to turn on anything as you try to write a poem about it.

Another of these writers groups that I participated in had us writing poems and then deleting all of the verbs from the poems. The next time we deleted all of the nouns from the same poem. And the next time we erased all of the adjectives. This sort of an example, while you may not be able to write a book using it, it shows you designs in your composing and it gives a constructive twist to the ways words can go together.

When you write creatively it is all about how you work with terminology. It’s almost like you are making a sculpture out of your words. So a mixture of odd approaches and seemingly unusual assignments in a writing class can really jumpstart creativeness and show you where your voice needs to take you.

I read an interesting book about writing once that showcased the writing of some developmentally disabled young adults. It was amazing how creative some of this writing was. It seemed to me that what had occurred is the writers didn’t apply the usual rules to the act of writing so what they came up with was entirely fresh and unique. When I did unusual writing assignments such as the ones I referred to, working with new rules or in the absence of rules was very helpful in showing me new sides of my own writing.

By: Sean Dalton

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Using writers groups can help you become a better writer.