Having a SUPPORTIVE local writing group has been a wonderful experience for me over the last year. It forces all of us to expose ourselves to styles and content that we would not otherwise bother with. It opens our minds. We learn techniques to praise and criticize based on the criteria related to writing quality, rather than choice of content. This is an excellent tool for developing our minds. Check out the link!
I also joined Peninsula Writers, a Michigan wide group that offers a different type of support. It was at the 2015 Winter Retreat that I wrote “The Daughters of the Land.”
And then, there’s the original writing group I joined! National Novel Writing Month, which you can check out at NaNoWriMo.org
I wrote 86,000 words in the first version of Knomo, and another 51,000 the next year. This final version has MAYBE 25,000 words of the original content, but heavily edited.