I am so excited about this place. But in case you need some help making your way, here are some suggestions for making this a strong site of support for your writing life and the completion of your book:

1. Join both of these public groups: The Writing Life and Goal Success.
The Writing Life is the place to talk about anything and everything to do with writing–to share marvelous links, recommend books and other resources, and just build community.

Goals Success is the place to declare and report in about your personal writing goals.

2. Join ONE of the following groups: Planning, Drafting, Marinating/ Reading OR Revising. You may cycle back through these groups, depending on the demands of your book at a particular moment. So pick the one that makes the most sense for you right now. You should also consider which series of lectures and assignments would be most helpful for you right now (Planning, Drafting, Marinating or Revising), and put yourself in that group. You are free to move groups when you shift stages in writing, and as I said, you may well cycle through each group more than once as you go.

3. Plan to attend one of the weekly hour-long coaching calls: Monday at noon PST or Thursday at 5 p.m. PST. It will probably work best if you make one your home group, but you are always welcome to visit the other if you can’t attend your meeting or you need an extra shot of inspiration one week. If you can’t make either time, recordings will be posted for later listening, and you can always post questions you’d like addressed.

4. There are other optional groups and courses that may be useful to you:
Trade Secrets offers technique boosts to strengthen your craft. Each month, starting in May, I will add to Trade Secrets, drawing on the work of the Visiting Distinguished Writer of that month.
Technical Support is the place where you can get your technical questions answered by Angie and other members of the community who are technically savvy. You can also help us out by offering suggestions or letting us know about problems.

5. Now jump in and start posting. Post your current goal to the Goal Success group. You can also post a status update in any of the groups to which you belong. Post your thoughts, discoveries, questions . . . Make friends. And as Angie mentioned in one of her little test blogs–we also want to put the “fun” back in, um, writing . . . Enjoy yourself here and in your own writing work, and you will come back again and again and get the job done.

Happy Writing!
Elizabeth