Starting a writers' group of your own can be an excellent way both to give encouragement and assistance to aspiring writers and to boost your own profile as a writer. It need not be an overly time consuming activity, nor will it require a great deal of setting up or ongoing effort on a small scale but there are several factors which should be taken into account before the group is publicised and formally established.
The first factor which you will have to take into consideration is whether your writing group is going to be for all writers in general or whether it is going to be for writers only to a specific genre or genres. There are advantages and disadvantages in setting up both types of group.
Setting up a writers' group for all writers will of course open up your group to a lot more potential members. This may be something to take into account in particularly smaller communities, where there are less likely to be a significant number of people interested in joining the group. It will, however, mean that such as science fiction writers will potentially be mixing with poets and with prospective journalists. This may decrease the overall value of the group to some of the individual members as they will be receiving feedback from writers largely unfamiliar with their specialised field.
If, on the other hand, you were to look at setting up a writing group only for perhaps fiction writers, or article writers, the feedback between the members would be much more likely to be focused and valuable. The potential drawback of reduced interest should, however, carefully be considered.
It is important also to consider where the writers' group is to hold its meetings. If there are only a few members, it may of course be entirely practical to hold the meetings in your home or perhaps in the homes of all the members on a rotational basis. This saves the cost of hiring a venue and eliminates the chances of interruption and distraction which holding the meetings in a public place would invite.
You will have to consider precisely what format each of your writers' group meetings are to take. Simply deciding to meet up and perhaps share samples of your writing material with each other is a good idea in the first instance but it could lead to some pretty staid get-togethers in the longer term as people run out of material which they wish to share. It may be a better idea to develop a format whereby part of the session is devoted to sharing writing tips, part to offering work for general critique and part to such as how a writer is progressing with a particular project related to their writing. There are a great many possibilities in this respect if you put your mind to it.
Finally, it is time to get the word out about your new writers' group. You may wish to consider an advert in the local library, supermarkets, even the local newspaper. Why not start a blog for the group online which others will hopefully find. It may later be possible to include group members on same as guest bloggers.
Starting a writers' group in this way can be a very exciting project and if managed correctly, an excellent way to ensure that all the members benefit in a great many ways from being a part of the larger writing community.