Community

I think that many of us secretly hold a romantic vision of the starving writer in our heads. This writer sits at a rickety table in a drafty, gray garret somewhere, scribbling (or typing) furiously through reams of smudged white paper while smoking endless cigarettes and downing bottle after bottle of cheap red wine. This writer does not have friends, or family, or pets. This writer exists in a perfect bubble of isolation, toiling way at the act of creation until voila! they have created something beautiful and unique and perfect.
Can you see your secret writer now, all rumpled clothes and mussed hair, dark circles beneath the eyes, ink smeared on fingers and cheeks? I can. I've had a secret writer in my head for a long, long time.
But you know what? I think that, for the majority of us writers, being that solitary is unhealthy. Our writing is fed by what we know, what we see, what we experience. It stands to reason that, therefore, our characters are fed by who we know, who we see, who we experience. We need exposure to the world in order to create. And beyond that, without the objective eye of our peers, how will we gain perspective on our work?
I believe that community is essential for growth as a writer/artist/what-have-you. But. It's important to find the right community. Don't just join the first critique group you come across. Check it out, by all means. Sit in on a session or three. Give them an excerpt, or a short story, of yours and see what they do with it. It's like a test. What you want in a community is a group of people who can read one another's work objectively (at least semi-objectively) and then give good, constructive, helpful feedback, be they fellow writers or not. Some the best feedback I get about my writing comes from a sibling of mine who doesn't write. But she reads a lot. So she has a sense of how stories work. And she's not attached to it like me, so she can tell me when things are good and when things are boring. I find feedback from other people to be immensely helpful. They always, always spot things I missed. Or just didn't think of. And that's the sort of community we should all be trying to find. A circle of trustworthy people who will look at your art, point out the good parts, and then politely poke their fingers through the holes, so you know that those holes are there. (And if you're really lucky, they may even have suggestion on how to fix those holes!)
It's taken me a while to build up a community for my writing to flourish in. It's still a fairly small circle of people. And I don't show them everything I write, not by a long shot. But just knowing that they will be fair and open-minded and helpful about whatever I toss at them is a beautiful feeling.
So I say let go of that lonely writer in the garret. Or write a story about him/her, and show it to your friends! Seriously, we can't help each other grow as writers if we all lock ourselves away from the world. So go out there and find or make some community. You'll be happier that way in the long run. I promise.