An “E-nkling” of Accountability: The Virtue of Having a Writing Group

This is a special guest post from my good friend and fellow writer, Deign Wryly. He brings excellent perspective and insights to the table, and I'm lucky to have him contribute to this site! — A.E.

In 2018, Alan, I, and my friend from graduate school, Tayler, formed the E-nklings, a creative writing group meant to help us stay accountable to our craft—albeit using a strange, more comfortable approach.

Over the course of 5 years, each of us completed our first novels. Each of us read the others’ works. We conducted multiple workshops for each novel, and we consistently discussed our progress from the very first draft through multiple revisions.

The thing that made our writing group a bit unique is that the three of us have only been in the same physical space during a single 2-day visit. Throughout the process, we used the social agreement of weekly blogging—conducted via email—to help push ourselves to write consistently.

Connections with Kindred Spirits

So how did the group form? Well, I have known Alan almost my entire life; we both went to the same grade school. In high school, we got to be close friends through varsity tennis, and we started riding to school together every day. Fighting the monotony of our rather long high school commute, we discussed our different creative ideas—fiction stories we were working on, graphic novels we envisioned, movies we would like to make.

I met Tayler in graduate school, and we quickly bonded over our love of epic poetry and of Jane Austen. After reading some of her poetry and short fiction, I told her about my own interest in creative writing.

Forming the Writing Group

Fast forward a few years, and I was in graduate school in Tulsa, Alan lived states away, as did Tayler. I would see each of them about once a year. It was at this point that I started working on Demunada, my black comic dystopian novel. But how to keep myself accountable? As we all know, just sitting down to write (even during our best weeks) can be a chore.

In my graduate studies, I took part in a weekly scholarly writing group, based on those outlined in the (excellent) book, Write No Matter What by Joli Jensen. This academic writing group was extremely rewarding; I found myself sitting down more often to work, and I experienced far less guilt when I took time away from writing. Finding this writing group helpful and wishing to become more productive on creative projects, I began to wonder if it might be possible to use a similar approach in my creative writing.

After separate discussions with Alan and Tayler, we began to sketch out an idea for a different kind of writing group; one that could be done asynchronously and in separate parts of the country. Soon after, I sent out an initial email that would soon grow into a rather long thread. Many more threads followed. This was the formation of a writing group we took to calling the E-nklings. The name, as many will recognize, plays on the Inklings—the creative writing group founded by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis at the Oxford pub, The Eagle & Child. Alan, Tayler, and I all share a deep love of Tolkien, so it only made sense.

Practical Matters

In our first post, we started by describing our respective creative writing projects, and then, after this initial conversation, we began writing regular posts. Although we oftentimes discussed where we were in our stories (i.e., the content and plot), our group was more focused on the process of our writing.

Every week, Alan, Tayler, and I would each write a blog post (sent as a reply email in the email chain) in which we would do two primary things. First, we would discuss how well our writing went the previous week. We would explain how effective we were at just sitting down to write. Had we met our goals, what writer’s block issues we were having, what elements of our jobs and personal lives had made writing difficult that week, what went well, etc.?

This part of our blogging was a comfortable place in which we evaluated our process, could celebrate victories (no matter the size), and even vent our deepest frustrations.

After providing an outline of the previous week, we would then set our goals for the current week. These goals were either task based or time based. Task-based goals could mean finishing a chapter or a scene or even just rereading a passage; however, time-based goals (something I borrowed from Jensen’s discussion of scholarly writing) were those in which you committed to a specific number of days that you would plan to sit down to write, even if you only completed a simple fifteen-minute session on any or all of those days.

As Jensen suggests in her book, you can be much more productive—consistently—if you do not equate successful writing with a long session of four or five hours. The easier it is to learn to just sit down and write (even for fifteen minutes), the more productive you become. Creating realistic goals that you can accomplish helps to create personal accountability, and oftentimes those begrudgingly begun fifteen minutes lead to long (even hours-long) sessions.

Conclusion

The E-nkling blogging process has not always been easy or perfect, of course. Over the course of five years, there were countless times that we did not achieve our respective tasks or complete all our writing sessions. There were times when all three of us failed to meet our goals, but taking the time the next week to address why we failed drove us to work harder in the future. There were times when we did not manage to get a post done for a week (or several), and of course, there were moments where hiatuses were needed and taken.

But as a group, we became comfortable talking to each other about our struggles, and because of the bond that such vulnerability necessarily develops, the workshopping of each novel—reading and reviewing completed over the course of months—were far more rewarding, and I would argue, much more effective.

Writing groups are essential. The feedback and criticism I received from Alan and Tayler’s careful reading of my work was paramount, but no less important was our weekly discussions of the process of writing. Beyond helping me to hone my own best writing practices, beyond helping me to avoid pitfalls and to recognize and address writer’s block, our virtual writing group created a space where I could develop a personal responsibility to my own goals, and to do so comfortably.