Writing can often feel like a very solitary process. Even the most successful authors, who have teams of editors and fact-checkers and agents, still have to sit down all by themselves and get those words out.

Lots of writers have a hard time with loneliness, and even if they don’t, everyone needs outside input on their work. You need a team who believes in you to help you do your best, and you don’t need to wait until you have an official agent or editor to get that help.

Writers who don’t have a professional team of editors solve this problem by joining writing groups. Some groups form through a creative writing class or retreat. Lots of other people form groups online. Maybe you and a few other people at your favorite coffee shop suddenly realized you were all working on your manuscripts and decided to have writing chats over pastries.

But more than moral support, a writing group can make a huge difference in the quality of your writing and your future success. In order to tap into those benefits, you need to be intentional about how you engage with your group.

Ask Good Questions

Think of the last time you sent a few pages to a friend. What did you ask them? Did you simply write an email saying, “Let me know what you think!” and attach the file?

While it’s understandable to assume that the whole point of asking for notes is to not give your reader any specific direction, that’s not actually a practical strategy.

Think of all the different things that go into a draft at any given point in the writing process. There are the early drafts where you’re working on the broad strokes of your plot, the later drafts where you’re looking for stray typos, and all the drafts in between where you’re changing your mind about everything each time you sit down to work.

How is your reader supposed to know what you need help with if you don’t tell them? How are you supposed to get help with what you need to work on right now if your reader comes back with critiques that you weren’t even thinking about addressing yet?

Before you send out your pages, consider what you need from your readers. Do you need their perspective on big-picture plot points, or are you looking for line edits? Does your dialogue need a fresh pair of eyes, or are you wondering if you should cut a side character? Get specific with what you need from your writing critique, or your writing group won’t help you do anything more than spin your wheels.

Be a Helper

Your writing group isn’t all about what everyone else can do for you. Your participation as a helpful member of the writing community is equally important.

When it’s your turn to be the one reading a draft and offering critiques, try to be the kind of reader you’d want for your own work. If the person you’re reading for didn’t ask the kinds of questions discussed above, ask them what they’d like help with. Is there anything in particular they’re getting stuck on?

Any writers’ group member worth their salt knows that it’s no help to simply heap praise on everything you read. Keep in mind, too, that someone else in your group may not be writing the kind of book you like to read, but that doesn’t mean you need to tell them to throw out their manuscript. After all, if you don’t like reading mysteries, you wouldn’t have anything good to say about Agatha Christie, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t a fantastic writer.

When it comes to supporting your group members, try to help them make the best version of the book they want to make—even if it’s not the kind of book you personally prefer to read.

Do What Works for You

There are a lot of different ways to get that precious feedback on your writing, and a group that meets in the park on Saturday mornings is only one of them.

A writing group doesn’t work for everyone for a lot of reasons. Some people are introverted and find the social aspect too overwhelming to be beneficial to their work. Other people find that the workshop-style approach of having a group talk about someone’s work while the author remains silent is a bad fit for their creative process. Or maybe it’s just hard to find people who have the time to read, come up with thoughtful comments, and then meet up to talk.

In that case, what you need may be a few individual people whom you trust. And depending on which part of the writing process you’re on, that may not even look like asking someone to read your work.

Try buying your friend dinner so that you have a chance to talk them through your plot outline and see what they think. Pick someone who’s really good at dialogue when you need help there, and send your first chapters to someone else you know who has a sharp eye for grammar. When you’re looking for someone to read an entire draft, maybe choose one person who loves your genre and another person who isn’t such a huge fan and see if they say any of the same things.

It Takes a Village

The key takeaway here is to seek out other people to help you with your writing. Don’t do it to check a box, and don’t do it with the assumption that everyone will praise you as the greatest novelist of your generation.

Instead, make yourself a member of a writing community, whatever that looks like for you. Learn how to ask for the kind of help you need, and give that same consideration to your fellow writers.

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog. When not writing or reading, she is a fiber and textile artist who sews, knits, crochets, weaves, and spins.