Sunday 3 May 2009

Got a Buddy?

I was reading an article in April's Writer's News earlier (okay so I'm a bit behind) about how some writers have a "buddy", someone that they share their writing with. They offer each other support and feedback etc. I know that there are a lot of writing groups out there (sadly not near me) and online forums but this buddy thing seems a lot more personal.
As I read further it mentioned that usually buddies commit to a certain amount of writing in a given time, say a story a month or 1000 words a week or whatever and I know that there are groups out there doing this already.
I would be interested in any-one's experience of writing buddies.

6 comments:

Karen said...

I have an online writing buddy I trust, and it's fab.

We each post a chapter a week on a private blog and the deadline, as well as the feedback, is brilliant for motivating us. We haven't missed a week since we started, apart from Christmas :o)

Colette McCormick said...

Wow that's impressive. Sounds like it's great for disciplining your writing.
Glad to hear that you gave yourselves Christmas off though. Sounds like you all deserved it.

Anonymous said...

I've gone one better than that and co-written a novel with a "buddy". We've learned a lot from each other along the way.

Other than that, my only writing group experiences are on-line with Cloud Line and the WaW sites.

Colette McCormick said...

How does that co-writing work? Do you do a chapter each?

Anonymous said...

We brainstormed the plot together on several occasions. Next we storyboarded the whole thing. Then we divided the thing up and wrote a number of scenes each and combined them, before deciding on the chapter breaks together. Now we just need to decide how to do the editing...

Colette McCormick said...

I would imagine that sharing the editing would be quite difficult.