How to Organize a Writers' Salon

Video Transcript

"In this clip, we're going to talk about how to organize a writers' salon. Now salon is a wonderful word and the definition in the dictionary of a salon is actually, "a regular gathering of distinguished people, artistic or literally, in a celebrity's home." And so here is your chance to be a celebrity and you can have regular meetings of distinguished people. Now there are different ways you can structure your writers' salon. But I think three of the main possibilities are where you have all writers there. Another possibility is where you have a combination of writers and actors to perform some of the writing pieces. And the third possibility is any sort of mixture of actors and writers but you're including an audience. Now when you start your writers' salon, you may just begin with just a couple people and that's fine. And three or four people is okay and it'll no doubt build up over time. Now it's important to have an agenda and a group leader and that probably will be you or you can assign someone else to it. There are different venues for your writers' salon and a great venue might be an actually, actual creative space, like a stage, which could be at a church or a community center. Someplace where its creative anyway and especially someplace where you're not going to encounter interruptions. Another option might be a coffee house. Now that's where you really have to watch for interruptions. I went to a salon at a coffee house and they had a live musician playing just a few feet from us. So it was hard to hear each other read. And so those are logistical things to check out with the coffee house. And you always want to make sure that you make reservations at the coffee house. Now usually, most of them will let a large group come in like that as long as everyone is buying coffee and rolls, that type of thing. And, of course, the last option is in your home or someone else's. And there you have a very controlled environment. Again, there I would say make sure that if you have kids, that they have babysitters that night or they're at friends. And you're not dealing with phone calls and the normal household chores and that you're totally going to be able to dedicate however long, an hour, two hours, three hours, only to your writers' salon. Now in terms of getting people to your writers' salon, you can start with people you know, that's the best place. And then you can even check out the local college. You could even go online looking under local listings for other writer groups or individual writers. Quality is better than quantity. So I would rather have two people really into writing rather than five friends who are, you know, just kind of there for fun and check it out and could take it or leave it. It's possible to set up teleconferencing and the good thing there is if you have a wider pool of writers, obviously, you have people all around the country, around the world, in fact. And what you can do is you can get an inexpensive site or on an existing website you have. Dedicate a page for just updates about the salon. So don't make this too hard on yourself. Part of the idea of a writers' salon is to get yourself away from the tedious work of writing, which it sometimes is, and to have something a little more fun and interactive than just working on your own. Now if you're holding the writers' salon at your home, you might either want to supply refreshments yourself or have someone bring them. Have a set time, usually a starting and an ending time, for people with babysitting or other obligations. And also it's important to take reservations from your people. Even if you have three people who are attending your salon and you know them all well, is work it out to where they make reservations. Organize it so it's also a productive working group that people know is serious."