The delight of a writers' group

On Friday we had our first quasi-official Skype meeting. It was an amazing success! I'm overly-amazingly excited for the rest of this summer, spending Friday evenings with such awesome people who share my passion for writing! And from all over the country--on the first day we had inhabitants of Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, Nebraska, and South Dakota. And we were missing two or three!

We began by quickly introducing ourselves and our stories. Then we went through a list of archetypes (like the ones I blogged about) and told about our characters that fit that role. We also did a little sketch of our protagonists' reactions to being shut in a dark room for interrogation. 

Once we all have our books, we will start going through that. I expect we will send each other snippets of writing, to garner constructive criticism. We'll help each other with messy spots, plot obstacles, character development, and especially encouragement. It will be nice to have the accountability so I actually get writing done over the summer. It's a delight to hear about other peoples' stories, and realize how many other teenagers are writing novels! It's also a great opportunity to apply what the lovely Professor Conroy has taught us. The hour-and-a-half flew by. (Especially with delicious homemade zucchini-carrot quiche for dinner.) 

I'll probably post updates on our group sometimes...right now I'm looking into getting a name for us. St. Francis de Sales is the patron saint of writers, so maybe after him.