Building Connections on a Lonely Planet
By Guest | February 3, 2025 |
Please welcome back long-time community member Keely Thrall as our guest today!
Keely writes contemporary and paranormal romance and is a proud member of the Stays Up Too Late Society of Book Addicts. (Their motto: “Just one more page, I swear!”) Her next short story, “The One That I Cherish” – in the Finding Forever Limited Edition Wedding Romance Collection – is available for preorder. Learn more about her books on her website, HERE.
Read on to learn about her efforts to grow a local writing community — especially if you live near Dulles, VA!
Welcome, Keely!
In March of 2024, I heard a call to step up to leadership in my local writers group.
Like any sane person, I stuck my fingers in my ears and said, “I’m not listening.” I had my priorities straight: write more stories, continue publishing, get better at marketing. Sell a few books.
But over the next two months, the whisper resurfaced, exhorting me, “It’s time.”
Time to put my strengths back into service in support of Washington Romance Writers (WRW), the writing community I’ve called “home” for 25 years.
That March, members of WRW were gathered at a rare in-person presentation and the then president asked, “What do you want from this community?” Among the replies:
“I want something on worldbuilding.”
“I’d like help with social media marketing.”
“How do I get better at conflict?”
“What should I include in my newsletter?”
All practical requests geared to helping writers at various stages. Yet even as folks voiced their individual asks, one wish was universally expressed:
“Nobody else understands me the way writers do.”
“I miss my people.”
“I want to network with other word nerds.”
“I crave more of the inspiration and support that comes when I’m with my writer pals.”
“I need more writer buddies.”
The common thread: each of us yearned for more time in the company of writers. For deeper connection.
Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that online communities don’t allow for building strong ties. I’m still logging into a morning Zoom writing session with a group I started back in May 2020. And, the leaders of Washington Romance Writers during the pandemic years kept our community up and running online when it could have poofed into nothingness.
But in March 2024, in that room with all of us rocking the particular high that comes from grooving with folks who are wired for story, that whisper reminded me: creating this kind of welcoming space is one of my superpowers.
Flash forward to July 1 when my term as president of Washington Romance Writers begins. We have 42 members (our pre-pandemic numbers hovered between 250-300). We have a July word count challenge starting. But the rest of the program year is a blank slate and I’m holding two priorities:
- enhance our chapter’s value proposition for current and prospective members
- grow the membership
How could our team show folks that entrusting us with their time, attention and dollars would net them a worthwhile ROI? Could we develop a mix of online and in-person offerings to maximize member and potential member engagement opportunities?
Equally as important, how could we do this without burning ourselves out or eating through the chapter’s funds?
We make two immediate low-no cost/high impact changes:
We set up a Zoom room available 24/7 for writing sprints. Members can either drop into one of the weekly scheduled zoom sessions or initiate their own “pop-up” sessions and invite chaptermates to join.
We relaunched our newsletter. With 500 subscribers, reactivating this tool helped us spread the word about this beloved community.
The next item to tackle: crafting that mix of can’t-miss programs.
Between August and early November, we:
- went to the movies
- convened an in-person annual meeting
- test drove a week of Zoom “business sprints”
- held a 101 session with a rep from Draft2Digital.
We shared knowledge. We shared meals. We connected. We grew.
During this timeframe, we blew past my initial, “Wouldn’t it be nice to grow the chapter by 10%?” goal. From a low of 42 members, we were now sitting around 50, a twenty percent increase. Could we hope for more?
We invited members to co-create peer-to-peer connections during Meetup November. Among us, we hosted 10 in-person and 21 Zoom writing sessions with over half the chapter participating in at least one event. Folks hosted in their homes. We met up at coffee shops and mall food courts. We opened our gatherings to non-members.
We shared knowledge. We shared meals. We connected. We grew.
By the end of month, we were hovering around the 60 member mark — a near 50% increase from our beginning number. Wow. After our December holiday luncheon — where (are you sensing a theme?) we shared a meal and connected — we saw another uptick in members. As of early January, we’re closing in on 70 members.
In 2025, our chapter is doing another online word count challenge in January. We’ll gather in person in February for a session on “The Ins and Outs of Writing Short Fiction” and March will see us online for a 101 session about all things Canva.
But our next really big test of growing our community’s return on investment will come in April, when we host The Dazzling All-Star Book Marketing Retreat, in Dulles, VA.
With presenters like Ines Johnson, Grace Burrowes, Lee Savino, Holly Darling, Quinn Brooks, Veronica Yager and so many others, our weekend will offer actionable content and opportunities to network. To learn. To share meals. To connect.
Again, my goal has never been growth for growth’s sake, but a growth derived from enriching and renewing the ties within and among our writing community. In this modern world of hyper-connectivity, it’s a little crazy that we’re suffering from a loneliness epidemic. But we are. And writers, man, we’re so good at staying cozy and alone in our writing nests. It can be all too easy to let a day, a week, a month slip by without refilling from the well of human interaction. We need our peers. We need each other. We need connection.
I take the growth we’ve had so far as proof we’re doing something needed and welcomed.
I’m keen to keep proving ourselves. And I hope you’ll join us in April. We can’t wait to connect with you.
What does connecting with your writing community look like for you these days?
Many thanks to today’s guest.
You can read more WU guest posts by visiting this link.
Hello Keely, and thank you for your post. You deserve credit for being the Make-It-Happen person at the heart of your writers group. It makes me envious, because Writer Unboxed is my one toehold on the writing world and community. But let me point something out:
“The common thread: each of us yearned for more time in the company of writers. For deeper connection.”
In terms of “common thread,” I think much more is involved. First, why is your group confined to romance writers? How many men currently figure, or figured in your group’s past?
I know these are obvious rhetorical questions, but I bring them up to make a point. What I think informs the common thread in your group is sisterhood and genre, not just the company of writers.
In our time, community is compartmentalized by genre, gender and sex, etc. People are interested in community, but now that interest is shaped by many ideological and social commitments unrelated to the craft of writing.
I think this is unfortunate. What do we cut ourselves off from by taking such assumptions for granted? That’s perhaps the best thing about the Writer Unboxed community. Women make up most of the membership, but that’s only because most readers and writers are women. Even so, WU is clearly for all writers of all stripes.
Thanks again for your post.
Hi Barry,
Thanks for your thoughts. Groups like Romance Writers of America and Washington Romance Writers were initially established as a way to advocate for a genre and its authors that traditionally–and still today–receive more derision than respect. While, yes, these groups are overwhelmingly female in numbers, membership has never been closed to men (and we have a number in WRW currently). Similarly, though we are a group built primarily of romance writers, we’ve never turned away folks who are interested in writing other genre fiction and have included in our ranks over the years individuals who write primarily mystery, fantasy, thriller, and/or science fiction. Name a genre category, I imagine we’ve had a member pursuing publication in it.
A lot of our education is applicable cross genres from craft focusing on story structure, deepening conflict, and world-building to marketing (like our upcoming retreat), and career strategy. Pretty much anything an author needs to learn, we’ve offered at one point or another. We will continue to do so with an open invitation for others to join us our community of writers.
Just so you know, Barry, I’ve found WRW of RWA very welcoming and Keely, in person, is very much the person the other commenters are admiring. At first I thought that the Washington Romance Writers might not welcome a bearded curmudgeon like me. I’m not much of a “joiner,” in general. But while I was producing “trunk” novels (manuscripts I don’t think I want to show people) I was having a lot of trouble with writing advice in general and writing better books in particular. I met a short story writer at a local science fiction/fantasy convention (Capclave) close to me (call her “Red”- she had (has) flaming red hair, an Irish temperament, happily married, and doesn’t suffer fools gladly). Red recommended WRW heartily as a WONDERFUL place to learn writing better, THE BEST place in the Washington Area to better my craft. Eventually, at her prompting, my wife’s prompting, and the prompting of the one other member of WRW I knew, I went to a meeting. The next month they were having a public-welcoming meeting where they invited a known author (and paid him a stipend) to teach for two days on a weekend at a local auditorium, for a MINIMAL charge to attend. I attended that, too, and joined WRW the next month.
That weekend my wife came, too, and we learned from a male thriller writer a full weekend’s worth of class! (My wife Laura is a poet, and has been paid professionally for her poetry.) People from all over, not just from WRW’s main stomping grounds around the Washington, DC area, attended that weekend. My wife was quite welcomed, I was quite welcomed, and there were at least three other males in the room (one was from the Philadelphia region, although I do not remember learning where the other two guys were from) who were quite pleased to attend.
Not all the people who attend WRW write romance. I don’t, although I’d have to be an idiot or a dinosaur not to include romantic sub-plots in modern fiction when they fit in. Tolkien mostly got away with almost-entirely-male characters in his fiction, but writers since, writing popular fiction, generally include women characters and often romantic elements. I write epic-size fantasy with some Sci-Fi thrown in. Probably the majority of my protagonists are female.
Not all writers attending WRW are published authors. WRW likes to emphasize that we’re all writers, and we’re all learning, Pre-published was the term WRW was using for those of us who weren’t yet getting paid for our published writing. I have a friend of many years (When I met him he was 15, a long while back) who kept saying we should write together. For our fourth attempt in September 2018 he handed me a draft of a first chapter that delighted me: Three girls in a school magic club had been summoned to the principal’s office of their middle school. They discuss not having ANY idea why they’ve been summoned. None of their meetings lately had anything terrible go wrong, and they were regularly entertaining birthday parties with their stage magic- enough to meet their club expenses. They are ushered into the inner sanctum of the principal’s office by their club sponsor, math teacher Mr. Holt. There, they show off their latest project, only made possible by the three girls cooperative efforts at overcoming challenges: a working magic wand.
They learn that since the time of Sir Isaac Newton, school magic clubs (often at the college level) and other magic clubs had been trying to “break the code” and make a magic wand on Earth, to little avail: Magic wands were created on worlds with a great deal more magic than Earth, like Avalon, which magicians had been visiting from and hosting visitors from Earth for many centuries. Avalon, of course, back in the middle ages, hosted King Arthur’s kingdom and his court magician, Merlin. Wands came from, or at least through, Avalon. Until now.
We sent our manuscript out the following January for a “developmental” edit, and in September 2019 we self-published Wandmaking 101 by Tom Crepeau (me) and David Hochhalter. Without WRW I might still be struggling to produce good manuscripts. Writing together, David in Houston and I in the Virginia suburbs of Washington DC have written eight books together and are growing more successful as time moves forward.
WRW has a diverse membership, including the occasional man who can overcome the prejudice against Romance as a formal genre. Building connections with other writers no matter their genre is something WRW has been known for since before I joined it. I have respected the romance genre for its stunning success for a great many years; watching romance fans carrying out bag after bag of paperbacks from library book sales has informed me that romance readers, in general, are voracious. I don’t get to very many meetings any more (I’ve been ill), but most of them I can attend remotely over computer so that I should have been at a great many more of them this past year than I’ve managed. The members I know are very friendly and make great friends (Hi, Keely!).
-tc
Tom – so good to hear from you! I’ve been glad to be your chapter mate for lo these many years and look forward to many more! Sending you good healing vibes and continued growth in readership!
As a fantasy writer, I joined Romance Writers of America and Washington Romance Writers because I was searching for a community that would support authors of genre fiction. (While I’ve written a number of romances, I’ve also written fantasy, psychological thriller, middle grade, and non-fiction.) It always saddens me when I see authors shy away from RWA and WRW because those writers are reluctant to be associated with a disfavored genre or with female authors. The vast majority of our writing careers are gender- and genre-agnostic; we all need to master craft, production, and marketing.
(I post this comment as a presenter at WRW’s upcoming marketing retreat, where I’ll be presenting two sessions — one on deciding between a traditional and a self-published career and one on 52+ promotional tactics — which are relevant for every author, regardless of gender or genre.)
Hi Mindy!
So glad to be a part of the WRW community with you. I’m looking forward to your presentations at the marketing retreat!!
Thank you Keely, not only for this fantastic blog post, but for fearlessly leading us into the future. It’s been a wonderful year filled with connection, camaraderie and words. Thank you for using your time and talents to build something meaningful and durable for your fellow writers.
Onward and Upward!
Christine
Christine – “Teamwork makes the dream work” — maybe that’s an overused phrase, but it takes all of us to make a community thrive. Thanks for being a big part of making WRW meaningful for me ! <3
Thanks so much for this, Keely. I agree that being with other writers is a vital part of the writing experience. It not only teaches us things that we can only learn from our peers, but it buoys us emotionally. Writing is a solo practice, which is why it is so very vital to have such communities like the WRW.
But I do firmly believe that it is the in-person meetings which have really made the membership numbers jump. Yes, the online meetings are great, but there is nothing like looking at a person in real life and chatting with them–we talk over each other and express ourselves through body language–things you just can’t do in a zoom meeting.
You have done an incredible job bringing the WRW back to life. Thank you for your time and commitment.
Step by intentional step, Meredith, right? One in-person writing date, one shared laugh, one groan of recognition over characters behaving like buttheads, they all build the foundation of community.
Watching the Washington Romance Writers membership grow over the last year has been SO inspirational. Lots of the growth has been from returning members (men and women both) who missed their writing community–but the rest has been new authors looking for the support we all need to get from “dream” to “publish.” What a gas it is to see us all pulling together, across genres and subgenres. Keely, you’ve really set an amazing tone of welcome for all. Author! Author!
It’s been so heartening to feel the renewed joy in this community! So grateful to be working alongside you on this.
Keely,
I so appreciate the WRW group and the connection/community it provides. I see the in-person and online as “both, and” and equally important. The Zoom sprints and the email word challenges give me a connection to others who are working in similar genres. Just knowing that there are others sitting in their own spaces, working on their own work, inspires me to sit in my space and write. Our January 15,000 word challenge conducted by email inspired me to write whenever opportunity presented itself, and the encouraging words of Irene and others built a connection that was so reinforcing. As a newish member of WRW, I learned so much about my colleagues, their motivation, their struggles (how do I get the villain to…). In my head I “know” a bit about them. While Zoom and email can build connections (think of the relationships that were built in the past by letters exchanged), there is nothing like in-person meetings.
I was able to attend my first in-person WRW event last Saturday and learned about writing “short” — something I’ve never considered, but now am quite excited about. More than the content, the value of putting real (rather than Zoom) persons to names was enormous — seeing the way someone sits, enters the room, engages in conversations, how some talk with their whole bodies, talking to them on the breaks about their grandchildren or children, or their commute and how they reacted to the traffic. The richness of in-person get togethers cannot be denied AND we can still build connections on line. I’m looking forward to many more in-person get togethers and on-line experiences with WRW.
There is a whole body of research on the importance of connections to our physical, mental, and psychological health. Two things stand out for me in that research. 1) Connections are built when there is a social component of the get together (either in-person or virtual). Exchanging information about the rest of our lives over a cup of coffee, a glass of wine, a meal, a movie connects us on different levels than just connecting on content. 2) Connections are built when interactions are more frequent than not. If too much time elapses between meetings occurs, participants drift away. The effort that the chapter has put in to give us as many opportunities as possible to connect is to be commended.
Thank you for all that you do, Keely, and for the contributions of so many members.
Deborah – I couldn’t agree more! I love the opportunities to interact in our various online arenas, but what a treat it was to meet you in person and get a better sense of who you are and what brought you to WRW. I look forward to many years of “weaving” the fabric of our community with you!
To borrow Barry’s term, you are absolutely a Make-It-Happen person. I knew that from our in-person interaction at UnCons, but it’s great to see how your enthusiasm and leadership are playing out so well for WRW! Kudos. And thanks for the reminder of how important it is to gather in person: I’ve been appreciating that aspect with my non-writer friends, and will consider how I might make that happen (on a smaller scale) with fellow writers this year.
Lol, well now I’m blushing, Alisha! But how can I not give back to a community that’s given *me* so much for so long? I think we all have a, if not responsibility then certainly an opportunity, to connect in ways that make life better for more than just oneself. I feel fortunate that I have certain skills that can be put to good service when it comes to building community and even luckier that I’m in a position to leverage those skills in a way that seems to be landing well with others. Feels very win-win. <3
The words college and colleague have shared history, and I’m sure I’m not alone in having fond memories of my college days–a time when learning was partnered with maturing, sometimes struggling, and often having a lot of fun! As an adult, working with “colleagues” has often made the difference between work that’s simply a way to bring home the bacon and work where I’ve found encouragement, camaraderie, and inspiration. That same collegial environment is what makes writers’ groups like WRW so important. Successful, traditionally published authors happily share a Zoom room or a food court table or a library meeting room with newbies just dipping their quills in ink for the first time as all of us are working to bring the words and ideas percolating in our brains into a finished product that readers can embrace. I am grateful to Keely for her dedication and enthusiasm, and I am grateful to writers groups everywhere that welcome aspirants and professionals alike.
Hear-hear to all the wonderful writings groups, large and small, online and in-person, that provide us with all that encouragement and sense of belonging! Collegiality is a great way to describe our purpose-filled, relationship-rich groups.
Keely I’m late to this (barbershop practice) but I love that you are a member of Stays Up Too Late Society of Book Addicts. Me too. And that’s why I love my kindle. I really enjoyed your post and agree wholeheartedly on the joys of community, especially in person. Even introverts need their people. It took years to build my Christian writing group but those monthly gatherings are the best. And I love my weekly choir, chorus and recorder practices. My tribe!
I love hearing how essential (and life-giving) your various groups are. Yes, even us introverts need a little regular facetime! Three cheers for another member of the Society of Book Addicts! We stay up too late and have No Regrets! <3
I’m so disappointed I can’t attend the retreat this year, but I loved your post. Community is so important, even for the most introverted of introverts. I hope the retreat is a huge success!
Sharon – grateful for you and all you bring to our community. You are a gift! (We’ll miss you at the Retreat!)
Hi. I’m a not-yet-published historical mystery (with lots of romance) writer who is a member of RWA and the RWA-NYC Chapter and the RWA Kiss of Death Romantic Suspense Chapter; MWA and the MWA-NY Chapter; and Sisters in Crime and a few of SinC’s Chapters. I LOVE my groups ( ; And I THANK people like Keely who step up and help them thrive. Thank you, Keely. This was a heartening post.
Pamela – I’m convinced we’re better together. I love seeing all the groups you swim in. Makes my heart happy. <3
Fantastic post, Keely!
Your energy, enthusiasm, and support have gotten me (and so many others) through tough writing times. I’m grateful to have met you through WRW. And I’m grateful that you’ve held my hand and sometimes pulled me along to keep writing. I wouldn’t be here without the community I found at WRW.