The stereotypical idea of a writer is a white, cis guy with round glasses, wearing knitted sweaters in his Dark Academia university, keeping to himself as he works on his tortured manuscript where at least one woman had breasted boobly.

Reality is much more broad and, honestly, a lot more interesting.

Anyone can be a writer and anyone should be one, because we need different voices if we want to describe “the human condition”.

But, as diverse of a group as we writers are, the fact most of us are introverted remains true.

I have been writing since I was thirteen. Now, in my thirties, my writing has only improved in the last few years.

Could it have to do with more life experience? Or more books I’ve been reading critically? Could it be that my frontal lobe finally developed?

No!

It has to do with one thing and one thing alone: I finally have friends who write!

(I am exaggerating for comedic effect, all of those things and many more have helped improve my writing).

It’s not like I thought my writing was perfect and I had no way to improve. I simply had no friends who were into writing (or even reading that much). So, it was me, my Toshiba laptop and my epic sci-fi clussterfuck against the world.

Having actual fellow humans read my work has been as life changing as it has been scary. The first time someone reads your book and tells you what needs to be improved is painful. Yes, it is. Even if you completely agree with the criticism. You feel naked, seen in a way you’d never been before, all your flaws laid bare.

But, once you take your hurt feelings out of the equations, you will see the ways to improve your writing. That book you’ve been stuck on might simply unlock for you allowing you to finally see its full potential.

We are too close to our stories. Even when we are trying to be objective, we simply can’t because we know it. Our brains use the information we have to fill in the blanks in the text that we left in the actual text.

One time, a beta reader asked if my main character wore a hijab. At first, I was baffled by the comment (the character was raised in a Muslim family but was obviously not religious anymore). Only then did I realize I never wrote a single line of description in a 80k+ word manuscript. My brain and I knew how the character looked like, so we obviously agreed the reader would too, even if we never offered them that piece of info.

So, where do you find those writing friends?

If you are in a big city, you might find a writing club you can join. But, maybe not. I certainly didn’t have one in my city (I sort of do now, but only after we made it ourselves).

For now, my best sources have been discord and Tumblr. My mutuals on Tumblr have been a godsend, but finding writing discords might be even easier.

If you’re from Ex Yugoslavia, I have a really good one to suggest.

What are your suggestions for finding writing friends?