Essay "E-mail Discussion Groups - Help or Hindrance?"

by Trudy W. Schuett

I've been online since 1995, and have belonged to dozens of e-mail groups for writers over the years. At first, I embraced them, because as a lone author living in a rural area, I had little or no opportunity to "talk writing" with anyone and had gone beyond the basic info hard-copy writers 'zines could offer. Some online groups featured things like weekly or daily writing prompts to get writers working and past the level of writing just for personal benefit. The amount of support and encouragement offered newbies on these lists is a valuable thing, but at what point does it become something that holds writers back from advancing their careers?

Eight years later, I've revisited some of these early lists I belonged to, and found to my dismay, many of the same people still posting exercises for critique and talking about the same unfinished projects. These people have stagnated and allowed themselves to get stuck in the cycle of expecting congratulations each time they produce a written work. Thus, when they do decide to submit a piece to a magazine or book publisher, they cannot deal with the rejection they most surely will get. Work is rejected for many reasons that often have nothing to do with the quality of the work, and even working professionals with many publishing credits find their submissions rejected from time to time. But if writers’ only experience is these "support and encouragement" groups, they've learned to focus entirely on the quality of the work and take rejection personally. They mistakenly think their work isn't good enough, and they get back into the safety and comfort of their group -- or groups. This is not a good thing, either for the individual writers or for the real newbies, who see this professional-quality work posted on these groups and are discouraged from attempting their own works. Eventually, these groups become known as elitist and cliquish, because after all, what else can happen with a handful of the same writers posting all the time on the same groups? Of course, some people are entirely happy to keep their audience limited. But when writers hang around too long, these kinds of groups are no longer effective and can become nothing more than an exercise in preaching to the choir.