writing-groups-in-maine-eelkat-wendycallen-author

Why I do not attend writing groups…

…are they all like this or just the ones in Maine?



By Wendy C Allen

I was just reading this thread on Reddit, which has nothing to do with writing groups at all, but within the comments, someone mentioned writing groups, talked of not being able to find a group that wasn’t all, what they called “pretenders pretending to be writers and never writing anything at all”, and it got me thinking, yeah, I had the same experience.

https://www.reddit.com/r/writers/s/FuAK1MZZ1R

I stopped going to offline writing groups. Used to attend several different ones, as I was in an area that had 3 or 4 going on any given month. But, it quickly became clear that PUBLISHED writers, were not welcomed at any of them.

Every group, the exact same thing happened. I’d attend for a few weeks/months, and we’d sit around talking about writing, talking about writing goals, talking about character creation, talking about world building…

Notice how we was always TALKING, but never WRITING?

Well that was fine, I’d bring paper and pens in case we ever did write, but we never did, and I could write at home, so I wasn’t bothered by it because I was spending time with other writers.

However, in every group it would eventually happen that someone new would join and their first day, they’d ask:

  • “I’m trying to get published, has any one here published anything yet?”

And in every case there would always be someone quick to say:“OH no, we are ALL amateurs. NO ONE HERE has EVER been published. You don’t really think PUBLISHED authors would be in a writing group do you?”

  • “OH no, we are ALL amateurs. NO ONE HERE has EVER been published. You don’t really think PUBLISHED authors would be in a writing group do you?”

And then I’d say: “I’m published.”

They’d all be shocked and horrified, and a few would always get openly hostile and say “published authors don’t belong in a writing group.”“published authors don’t belong in a writing group.”

Wait, what? Why?

Oh they had reasons too.

One railed how published authors were all smug, another added that they were greedy and money hungry, another said published authors were not REAL writers because they didn’t write for art, 

  • …published authors were not REAL writers because they didn’t write for art

…they all had a lot to say about tortured starving artists and how that was their goal in life…

…wait, really? Your GOAL is to be a STARVING ARTIST?

What?

They went full on bat shit crazy, at first lashing out at the new member for daring to commit the sin of having a goal of publishing, then at me for having committed the full on crime of having already been published.

Good god!

The new writer would ignore them, ask when I published, where, how, what, and my answer is ALWAYS what would send the whole kit caboodle of them into a frenzy because:

  1. Since 1978 I have published 138 novels, 423 novellas, 500+ poems, and 3k+ short stories. Some published by Hatchet, over a dozen published by Disney, some published by Egmont, some published in very big magazines including Cricket, Highlights, and other similar children’s magazines. One of my novels sold over a million copies. In total, all titles combined, I’ve sold over ten million copies.

…and in every case of the group suddenly connected that:

  • “oh yeah, that’s where I heard you’re name before, wait that’s really you? I thought you just had the same name as her. I didn’t realize you were ACTUALLY her!”

… this was ALWAYS followed by weird changes to the group.

Usually from that day forward 90% of the group would no longer attend, and the few who did would say they were going to quit the group citing: “I’m not comfortable around published authors, I just want to hang out with writers.”

  • “I’m not comfortable around published authors, I just want to hang out with writers.”

Group leaders would change the groups to be Skype chat only, and or completely move the location of their group to a different town entirely…one moved the group a full 5 hour drive all the way across the state!

  • It happened every single time.
  • It happened at over a dozen different writing groups, in the space of only two years.
  • In one I was in attendance over 6 months before they found out I was published and same thing happened again.

In every single offline writing group, it became glaringly obvious that “US WRITERS don’t associate with THEM PUBLISHED AUTHORS” but I have no clue why.

  1. “US WRITERS don’t associate with THEM PUBLISHED AUTHORS”
  • Some were small groups only 3 or 4 people.
  • A couple were large groups with 20+ people.
  • One, had over 30 people.

In total it was well over 200 people in a relatively small area of Southern Maine, whom ALL had this weird hive mind that: writers and authors are not the same thing and should NEVER be seen in the same room together.

  • writers and authors are not the same thing and should NEVER be seen in the same room together.

But I have to ask, how do they think authors got published if they did not first write?

The mindset that authors are not writers and writers are never to associate with authors, is just mind boggling to me and I simply do not understand it at all.

It was like, they just wanted to TALK about writing and they didn’t want their writing TALK to be interrupted by anything that might remind them writers eventually have to WRITE something.

It was just so bizarre.

When it happened the first time, I just thought it was that one group.

But it happened over a dozen different times, in groups all across the state in two years, and now I realize it’s some kind of trend, for “writers” to get together and talk about writing, so long as no actual writers who actually write things ever show up.

And… well… that’s what a lot online writing groups remind me of, when I see them talking about how they want to write but they don’t want to read.

I feel like a lot of the ones who say they hate to read, also really don’t want to write either. They just want to talk about writing.

| ©2025 Wendy Christine Allen | All Rights Reserved |

The Park Bench Method To Writing (and the series of articles and rants that go with it)

I've Written An Entire Series on The Park Bench Method of Writing. Here are more of the articles in this set: 

The Park Bench Method To Writing (Just the article - no prompt lists)

The Park Bench Method of Writing (the really old long, rambly post from years ago; the long page with over 10k writing prompts and lots of lists)


More like this:

Self Publishing-My Self-Publishing Methods | Things I Have Personally Done

What (self-publishing) platform pays the most (for books)? My top 3 picks. Comparing my results from different places.

How did you build your audience? Not online, that’s for sure.

Writing is dead.…is it?

Amazon KDP Royalty Changes Coming June 10, 2025 Are you ready for it?





While there are around 20k pages on this website, most of them are blocked from search engines, with only around 800 of them available for appearing in Google/Bing/etc search results. The remainder can only be accessed via the various links found throughout this site. This was done deliberately on my part, and I did it because the bulk of the pages on this website are chapters from 138 novels and 423 novellas, so only the first page of each novel and novella indexed by search engines, and the remainder are linked in order, one page at a time, via clicking "next page" at the end of each. So if you are looking for a specific page from a specific novel, Google can't help you.



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Wendy Christine Allen 🌸💖🦄 aka EelKat 🧿💛🔮👻
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