There's a New Girl in Town

Not exactly a girl, rather a new social networking site. She Writes is the hot new site for writers. It's been live for just about two weeks and has already achieved an astonishing response. I was new member #325; within days that number had climbed to 1000. Now it tops 2000. Playwrights, novelists, memoirists, journalists, and poets flocked to the site, anxious to see what the fuss was all about.

There's a lot going on at the site. Members can post news, videos, and events. Bloggers can post blog entries. Soon there will be workshops offered on such topics as Social Media, Editing, Marketing / Publicity, Book Video Trailers, and Author Event Planning. Each member gets her own page which can be customized with a variety of templates and color choices. This page contains a profile, a list of the groups the member belongs to, a list of publications, and whatever else the member wants to add.

One of my favorite features is the groups. Although the membership is large, there are all sorts of smaller groups, each started by a member. Anyone can create a group. Right now there are 81 different groups. Among them are Fiction Writers, Marketing and Promotion, Food Writers, Anthologies, Disability Writers, Reading Series Curators and Hosts, and Haiku Writers. I immediately joined Bloggers: Let's Make It Work which currently has the most members at 262 and Poetry Social which remains cozy at 62. Bloggers is a great place for getting technical information as well as ideas for post topics. The members have a wide variety of blogs. Because of the popularity of this group, a blog index was created. This is available to all the members of the site. Poetry Social is useful for talks about craft, marketing a poetry book, and reading style. Prose writers greatly outnumber the poets on the site, but this group is a great little corner for the poets to gather in.

Another feature I like is that the site is not searchable. What you say there stays there and won't show up in Google searches. While anyone can visit the Main page, only members can peruse the entire site. The focus of this networking site is obviously women writers, but men are invited to join as well and a number have.

So why not pop on over and see for yourself? Then if you do decide to join, please use your full name, first and last. A photo would also be nice. I mention this as several people have joined first name only or with some strange handle instead of a name. What's the point of joining a networking site if you're going to mask your identity? Also, I should mention that the site is for individuals only, not businesses or journals. So far I'm happy to be there. It's a wealth of information and fun.

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