J.R.R. "Tollers" Tolkien and C.S. "Jack" Lewis used to hang out with their literary buddies every Thursday night in Lewis' dorm room. They had no rules for these meetings, no officers, agendas or formal elections, but they did have a name, The Inklings. And what did they do? They sat around listening to first drafts of The Lord of the Rings or Out of the Silent Planet. They read, critiqued and discussed one another's unfinished works. If they were in a particularly silly mood they held competitions to see who could read the famously bad prose of Amanda McKittrick Ros for the longest without laughing (This probably ended with beer coming out their noses. Who knows?).  On Tuesdays they gathered again at the pub known as The Bird and Baby. They were friends, they were fledgling writers, and they grew their literary pen-feathers together. Most of them eventually flew off to become renowned writers of their time and ours. 

Virginia Wolf had the controversial Bloomsbury Group full of nonconformist writers, thinkers and artists. Most of its members lived in the West Coast 1 district of London known as Bloomsbury, thus the name. Together this group of elite intellectuals battled, loved and created around such issues as women's suffrage, war, politics, gender and aesthetics.  The group was shattered with the onslaught of the First World War but later, in their forties, most of them came back together as the Memoir Club which met irregularly for almost thirty years. There influence as an artistic community on the world as we know it can only be described as significant.

Stephen King and Dave Barry have a band. It's somewhat of a joke band, really, named the Rock Bottom Remainders. The members aren't primarily musicians, they're writers and they claim to play as well as Metallica writes novels. The point is they get together. They have fun and talk about their writing between songs. They have gone out of their way to create artistic community because, as much as we writers would like to deny it, good art is not created in a vacuum (or any other appliance for that matter). 

And what should happen on October 27, 2008 but the birth of another such community. I had the privilege of attending the virtual birth, of the Wily Writers Group, started by angelmcc and myself. Angel gets most of the credit. She did the labor. I wandered the halls looking confused but thrilled with a cup of coffee in hand. I cheered her on and couldn't wait to get my hands on the baby. 

We don't know what it will be quite yet, what it will grow into. What we do know is that we all want to "get serious" about writing. We want to improve our craft and sell enough to at least pay the light bill so we can see to write more. Maybe we'll grow famous alongside one another.  Maybe we'll only laugh and snort beer out our noses. 

Twelve speculative fiction writers from all over the globe have agreed to meet. Watch out universe, here we come. 


Questions for you LJ's out there:
Do you belong to a writers group or community?
If so, what size and how is it organized?  Is it face-to-face?  On the net?  Through LJ?
What is the most valuable thing to you about that group?
What would you change if you could to improve it?