Writing Groups and the Internet
The other day, Jon Gibbs (jongibbs ) had a post about the importance of writing groups. The entry provoked a bit of discussion, and one of them from S. K. Williams (brimfire ) caught my attention. She had mentioned that she'd been in some writers' groups before, and that she'd like to find a group that was closer to the subgenres that she writes. Jon's reply was that we should start an LJ community to allow people to promote their own writers' groups.
My response that there ought to be a website for such an endeavor was met by Jon's irreverent "if you set one up, let me know and I'll pimp it here."
I kind of laughed it off at first, but the more I've thought about it the past couple of days, the more I'm intrigued by the idea. There are plenty of writers' resources out there on the web and there are local and net-only writers' groups out there as well, but there doesn't seem to be a central meeting place where local writers' groups can promote themselves. I've found a couple of places where people have put together listings of writers' associations (here is one example) but there's nothing resembling an online database of local/online resources.
On the surface, it makes sense. However, I'm not so certain that the writing community would take to such a database. Another potential problem is who would maintain the database entries: the writers' groups themselves or the webmaster? How active should the site be in searching for writers' groups? Should it even bother? What would be the searchable data in such a DB?
For the record, I'm not committing to any sort of project. My expertise is in IT security and software development, not DB administration or website design. Right now, I'm in the brainstorming/kicking the tires/intrigued by the concept phase, and the last thing I need is another major project to sap some of my free time. (I get enough of that from WoW as it is.)
However, I want to hear from people out there what they think about such an idea. Pass the link to this entry around and let's get a conversation started. Does this idea make sense? Why or why not? What would be important in such a project? How would such a project be integrated into existing social networking sites?
And if the concept doesn't receive an overwhelming vote of confidence, I can let that itch to do something slide away without any guilt.
(Yeah, right.)
My response that there ought to be a website for such an endeavor was met by Jon's irreverent "if you set one up, let me know and I'll pimp it here."
I kind of laughed it off at first, but the more I've thought about it the past couple of days, the more I'm intrigued by the idea. There are plenty of writers' resources out there on the web and there are local and net-only writers' groups out there as well, but there doesn't seem to be a central meeting place where local writers' groups can promote themselves. I've found a couple of places where people have put together listings of writers' associations (here is one example) but there's nothing resembling an online database of local/online resources.
On the surface, it makes sense. However, I'm not so certain that the writing community would take to such a database. Another potential problem is who would maintain the database entries: the writers' groups themselves or the webmaster? How active should the site be in searching for writers' groups? Should it even bother? What would be the searchable data in such a DB?
For the record, I'm not committing to any sort of project. My expertise is in IT security and software development, not DB administration or website design. Right now, I'm in the brainstorming/kicking the tires/intrigued by the concept phase, and the last thing I need is another major project to sap some of my free time. (I get enough of that from WoW as it is.)
However, I want to hear from people out there what they think about such an idea. Pass the link to this entry around and let's get a conversation started. Does this idea make sense? Why or why not? What would be important in such a project? How would such a project be integrated into existing social networking sites?
And if the concept doesn't receive an overwhelming vote of confidence, I can let that itch to do something slide away without any guilt.
(Yeah, right.)