My wife saw a poster in a local restaurant advertising yet another writing group in the Pioneer Valley which I hadn’t heard of: The Western Mass Writers Guild. I poked around their website and saw they had a Discord Link, so I joined it. And then I saw they had a meeting scheduled for today: Support and Accountability for Novel Editing (the first Saturday of each month at 3:30pm at the Forbes Library in Northampton), so I decided to give it a try.

I had seen that several of the regulars were unable to attend, so I wasn’t sure if anyone was coming. But after a few minutes one person showed up, and then another. Two of us were new, but one was familiar with the organization and could give us some background.

The organization began as the Western Mass regional group for NaNoWriMo. But, after the collapse of that organization, they decided to reorganize as the Western Mass Writers Guild. Originally, they were primarily focused on novel writing in November.

They’re mostly a quiet working group: a little socializing and mostly just working on writing together. They don’t do readings or critiques, as a rule, but people can self organize relationships with members if they want to form critique groups.

Most of the activity is on the Discord. There are a number of channels where people can ask questions. They also have a channel where people share useful links to resources.

I stayed for a bit more than an hour and got to show a copy of my new book (A Familiar Problem). Then, I needed to leave. But I will probably attend again, sometime.