{"id":6351,"date":"2012-10-09T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-10-09T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/?p=6351"},"modified":"2012-10-08T22:35:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-09T05:35:25","slug":"the-importance-of-a-writers-group-online-or-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersfunzone.com\/blog\/2012\/10\/09\/the-importance-of-a-writers-group-online-or-off\/","title":{"rendered":"The Importance of a Writer\u2019s Group\u2014Online or Off by Karina Fabian"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Guest post by Karina Fabian, author of the newly released,\u00a0I Left My Brains in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a myth that writers are solitary creatures. Writers have always\u00a0benefited\u00a0from meeting in groups to share their works and discuss the issues of writing and living. In a really good group, you get far more than simple critique or support. You\u2019ll find leads, get ideas, and maybe even find yourself moving in a unexpected direction.<\/p>\n

In September, my latest book, I Left My Brains in San Francisco<\/em>, came out from Damnation Books. As with the first book in this series, Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator<\/em>, it came about as a direct result of being a part of The Writer\u2019s Chat Room, http:\/\/writerschatroom.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Writer\u2019s Chat Room is an informal group in that the membership is always changing, and there are no rules for joining, other than basic chat etiquette. Sunday nights, we have a guest author who talks about their books and career. Wednesdays, we have a guided chat on a writing topic for an hour, then open chat where we answer questions, talk about our books, or catch up on each other\u2019s lives. Sometimes, we just get silly. We have multi-published authors, brand new authors, avid readers, and now and again someone best-selling famous pops in. (A running joke is, \u201cWas that Stephen King?\u201d)<\/p>\n

A few years ago, one of our members, Kim Richards, decided to start her own publishing company, Damnation Books, for horror and dark fiction, and she wanted to do an anthology called The Zombie Cookbook<\/em> to kick off the company. I believe we\u2019d gotten silly one chat about cooking and zombies, so she invited\u2014then begged\u2014us to submit our stories, poems, and even recipes for the book. I\u2019m not much for zombies, personally, but at the urging of a friend from the group, Becca Butcher, I whipped up two\u2014\u201cMy Big, Fat, Zombie Wedding,\u201d and \u201cWokking Dead,\u201d about an exterminator, Neeta Lyffe, who gets called in to take out an infestation of zombies in a Korean restaurant. Full of puns and silliness, I expected little to come from it aside from helping out a TWC friend.<\/p>\n

People loved \u201cWokking Dead,\u201d but even more important, another TWC member, Kim Bacceilia, suggested to Kim that I write a novel with Neeta Lyffe. So she asked me, and I put it off because I didn\u2019t really have an idea for Neeta. However, she asked again, during the Wednesday chat, when the topics du jour were reality TV and favorite first lines. Someone put up, \u201cThey ate Jorgenson first.\u201d WHAM! I had the perfect idea\u2014a reality TV show based on training zombie exterminators. Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator is out by Damnation and has won several awards.<\/p>\n

Another fun thing we do in TWC is writing prompts, where the TWC Coordinator, Audrey Shaffer, gives us an idea and time limit, and we post a quick writing. One of those prompts was \u201cWrite advertising for a car that runs on manure.\u201d\u00a0 In Neeta Lyffe, Zombie Exterminator, I had a fake car company, GovMo, so I created the GovMo Crapmaster.<\/p>\n