Writing together in small groups is very important, and there are a lot of reasons for that. You become better when surrounded by your craft. You have fun, and because of that ideas flow better. It's motivating writing for others as well as yourself. It's exciting to share a story idea with someone. New ideas flow easily and readily once you've done a few different story projects. You're creating, and creating something is always engaging. And when you suddenly realize you've hit 60k in one month with five friends, you're left feeling mighty accomplished. Even if afterwards you look at it and say, "Well, that was barely good enough to be a good rough draft." (But hey, it only took a month for the characters/plot to get hashed out, now all you have to do is rearrange it/review and rewrite!)

If you read and or write every day you will become a better writer.

And sometimes writers tend to get caught up in their own story; their own novel. And the writing must be good. And everything must be perfect. The first time around. And that is mentaly tiresome and after a while it just bogs you down. But we can't help it because we're writers.

It's important to write at least a thousand words a day (ideally), as an exercise. Which means you're not stressing too much about the perfect plot or the perfect words. Once we start writing like that, and letting go, it's easier to write more than a thousand words a day.

This is a long and round about way of explaining why collaborations (a.k.a. "RPGs") are important. Though I think as you get older you want a more stable story and you don't want to write with fifteen Mary Sues and eight Narutos.

If you get the right group of people together you can create good things together, new stories- even if they are a bit silly or not really novel material. But then again sometimes you have the potential to make novel material, but that's another story. (I'm so punny.)

After all, what doesn't kill you makes for novel material.

So what I'm saying is, hello everyone. Welcome to our library. At Minus The Papercuts we write together or apart, share our ideas, or our novel drafts, and ask for critiques and input. We share, we learn, we grow- and most importantly we write.

So write on.