To group or to solo, ah, that is the question.

As with most other worthwhile endeavors, writing doesn’t happen in a vacuum, regardless of Emily Dickinson’s, one of America’s most famous poets, self-imposed seclusion. In today’s complex world of writing, group involvement is the name of the game; and this particular group, part of Motown Writers Network, is right in the heart of Detroit where members gather for some serious writing at Barnes & Noble on Warren and Cass every second Saturday except for November.

“So why a writing group?” some literary mavericks may ask.

One reason is there’s power in numbers. That applies to writers, especially, even though some may lay claim to being nonconformist lonely cowboys of the writing prairie. Admittedly orange butterfly weed, dotted blazing star, and tall grasslands may be stunning, but it is in the writing group a writer must lay his muse on the table, the same table around which other writers sit to provide feedback on works in progress.

Another reason, there’s this strange phenomenon that most writing devotees know as being intrinsically woven into the fabric of writing groups, an alchemy of creativity, because it is not really possible to teach anyone to write. Writing comes from deep within a writer’s soul, and the purpose of the writing group is to facilitate that creativity by providing a nonthreatening nurturing environment in which writers can grow.

This mysterious transformative power of the group is what keeps writers humble, centered, while, at the same time, sending them on a lifelong journey of writing where the journey is as meaningful as the destination. But no matter how far writers travel in their creative search, they always come back home to their group, humbled by their wandering and the realization that the destination, which to some may be that much sought after book contract, or making it on the New York Times best seller list, isn’t the end of writing. Their humility will serve them well for even if they do get published, they’re already asking themselves, what next?

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