Online Communities for Writers

Writing can be a lonely profession. If you are a writer who works from home, you might be longing for a sense of community, as well as some human contact, during the course of your long days. The sense of fellowship to be found in such communities can be extraordinarily comforting and emotionally nourishing, and it can often give you the little boost you need to get back to a difficult project.

For instance, if you write Hubs for HubPages.com, you might want to participate in the forum on this website. You will find a lot of encouraging fellow writers there who enjoy writing and are also specifically interested in writing online. Not only will you meet fellow Hub writers, but you will also learn a lot about how to improve your Hub writing skills.

Another writing website with a very active forum for its writers is eHow.com. What’s great about such websites is that these online communities are filled with eHow veterans and eHow newbies and everyone has a lot to teach (and learn from) one another. You can always “lurk” on such writing forums for a while before making your first post just to get a general sense of the community and the topics that are typically discussed there.

Both WAHM.com and WorkPlaceLikeHome.com (two online communities for people who work from home) feature active sub-forums for writers who work from home. These are both worth checking out, especially if you like to write online rather than offline. People post about their experiences with specific writing websites and employers.

Freelancewriting.com, WritersWeekly.com and AbsoluteWrite.com all also feature very active forums filled with freelance writers willing to share their experiences, warnings, “war wounds” and other anecdotes about their writing experiences. These are great virtual “cyber places” in which to meet other writers who understand your desire to write and can offer helpful advice on a variety of writing related topics.

Of course participating in online forums for writers can be a fun distraction, but it can also become a time consuming obesssion if you are not careful to monitor your own usage. In fact, it can eat (rather significantly) into your actual writing time. If you find that you are spending too much time in online forums for writers, then you might want to impose specific limits on yourself. For instance, you might limit yourself to spending not more than one half hour per day in online communities for writers. In other words, use the forums for fellowship and camaraderie, but try not to use them to procrastinate too much.

Something else to bear in mind about online communities for writers (and online communities in general) is that people can get quite opinionated and you will not agree with what everyone has to say. Heated, deeply passionate discussions (and even arguments) can break out from time to time, so it is important to choose your words with great care. (Because you are writing and not speaking, people can not always tell if you are joking, for example, and they cannot “hear” any inflections in the written word.) So proceed with caution and try not to get too caught up in any disputes, which can waste a lot of your time and also lead to hurt feelings all around.