MWG Writes on Q Issue 2, 2015 | Page 20

Mississauga Writers Group June 2015 Heart to Heart in more detail, please visit their respective websites: MWG – www.mississaugawritersgroup.com and WEN - www.wenetwork.ca If one chooses to pursue writing with any sort of object toward becoming successful, or just widely read by people other than your family and close friends, then you have to get out there and NETWORK! Look in your local papers for writer-friendly groups; attend local arts and writers events, and talk to other people who have travelled the path-to-publication before you. Unfortunately, in this day of tight budgets, an “unknown” author will have a hard time finding a literary agent willing to take you “under wing”, or a commercial publisher willing to spend the money to get your piece published; you will have to do this on your own! However, membership in groups such as MWG and WEN goes a long way towards shortening that path to manuscript completion and publication; you will ALWAYS find sympathetic and helpful people to support your pursuit of the written word in groups like these – seek them out! It cannot be overstated, the variety and wealth of experience brought by the membership of such groups is incalculable. Where the act of writing and editing is often done in a lonely isolation, the brief respite afforded by these communal gatherings helps deliver the author from his/her own personal wilderness; the networking and monthly guest lectures helps to refill the group member’s depleted “social psyche”. A synergy develops during these meetings that I find, by their end, leaves me refreshed and energized – ready to carry on with my next writing assignment; I say again, it is the group’s membership that makes it work! It is the passion, experience of and contacts within the writing/editing/publishing world that the membership to groups like the Mississauga Writers Group and the Writers & Editors Network brings, which makes them so exciting to join. On a personal note, I would love to see the Mississauga Writers Group form a partnership with the Writers & Editors Network, sharing each other’s membership and all that that brings to the relationship. This cross-pollination of ideas and experiences, coupled with the promotion of each other’s events and meetings can only be a good thing.