For the last ten years, I’ve run a weekly writing group. This has almost always been on a Tuesday and with a co-organiser.
I inititally joined in 2010, when the group was still a branch of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I took over in 2015 once the original organisers graduated and moved away. After withdrawing our affiliation from NaNoWriMo two years ago, two of us now jointly run it as an independent group.
It must be stated that we have a manageable number of members, so other than a few word-of-mouth referrals, the group is not actively recruiting at present.
In its current form, members can drop in at any time during the two-hour session, either in-person or via Discord. They’re welcome to stay for a short while or the whole session, and there isn’t even an expectation to write. We frequently end up chatting, joking, making plans and/or solving problems.
But although that format is consistent these days, it took some trial and error to figure it out.
As the main NaNoWriMo challenge only took place during November, the weekly meetings coincided with that. After some enthusiasm by members, we cautiously extended the-e weekly meetings on a trial basis through December, then January, then February, and so on. People were still coming along, so we confidently started meeting up all year round. We now have a recurring table reservation and the staff know us well.
On a couple of occasions before the pandemic, I even brought the members around to my house on 31 October so we could begin to draft our novels at the stroke of 1 November.
While the meetings themselves have always been a hit, the members have rarely been interested in any formal activites such as writing sprints, feedback sessions or homework challenges. Variations of these have been attempted with different leaderships in different years, but none have caught on.
In Dundee, at least, the thirst is simply for ringfenced time to write every week and that’s what we provide.
Gavin Cameron 