Guest Post: Finding Your Writerly Community by Brett Jonas

Hey friends! I have one more guest post for you this month, from Chapter One Young Writers' Conference team member Brett Jonas! I had an incredible time at the conference back in 2014, and the very affordable early bird pricing for the 2017 conference is open until June 1st! Make sure you guise check it out if getting to Chicago is feasible for you. :) 

Take it away, Brett!

When you’re first starting out, writing can seem like a solitary hobby. You sit, alone, in the library. You sit, alone, in the coffee shop. You sit, alone, in your bedroom. But there are other writers out there, and there is nothing that writers love doing more than procrastinating on their writing by hanging out with other writers! Whether online or in person, meeting new writers is lots of fun—and it doesn’t have to be hard to do. Here are a few things that might help you find your writerly community.

1. Twitter
   
   Ava has already written several great posts on Twitter for writers, so I’ll just point you to some of her posts about it, but Twitter can be amazing for making friends who are just as passionate about writing as you are! A good way to start is by using some of the well-known writer hashtags and interacting with other people who use them.


2. NaNoWriMo
   
   Every year in November, hundreds of thousands of people participate in NaNoWriMo, which stands for National Novel Writing Month, where the goal is to write fifty thousand words in a month. If that seems a bit extreme, you can check out Camp NaNoWriMo, which happens in the summer, and has a flexible word count. With NaNoWriMo, you can meet people in the forums, and during the Camps, you get put in a virtual “cabin” with several other writers, which is a great way to meet new friends!
   
   
3. Writing Conferences
   
   Chances are, there’s a great writer’s conference somewhere close to you. And if there isn’t, it’s a good excuse to get out and take a trip! Writing conferences can be absolutely amazing. Not only do you get out of your house, but you get to learn from incredible people in publishing and meet writers in person. And I’ve found that, after you get home from a writer’s conference, you’re pretty excited and inspired and ready to get back to writing.
   
   There are writing conferences all over the country, like Midwest Writers and the Writer’s Digest Conference, but my personal favorite is Chapter One Young Writers Conference (or Ch1Con). It’s a conference for young writers (ages 11 through 23), put on by young writers (including me!). Speakers for the 2017 conference include Kody Keplinger (New York Times Bestselling author of RUN, THE DUFF, and more), literary agent Brent Taylor, and more. Ch1Con has always been an amazing experience for me, and I’d love to meet you there!

Brett Jonas is a writer, reader, Christian, lover of chocolate, and over-user of smiley faces. After being homeschooled her whole life, she’s now taking classes at the local community college and working in her family’s business, Goat Milk Stuff, with her seven younger siblings. In the rare moments when she’s not writing, working, or doing homework, you can find her doing things for the Chapter One Young Writer's Conference or wasting time on Twitter as @BookSquirt, where she loves making friends and using too many exclamation points.

Where have you found your writerly community? 

Twitter-sized bite:

Struggling to find a writer community? @BookSquirt shares some tips for finding those connections. (Click to tweet)