Folks, the other day I met a new writer in an unexpected place. He told me he feels overwhelmed; he doesn’t know where to go for any support, and he doesn’t know how to get any help for his writing. He’s in the very early stages; he’s trying to organize his thoughts, and needs to have confidence that these thoughts will be able to be organized eventually.

While I cannot give anyone confidence — sometimes I can’t even give myself that! — I was at least able to point him in the right direction, as far as a few helpful writing groups are concerned.

But this got me thinking. What about the other new writers out there, who don’t know very much, and are overwhelmed? Do they even know which sites to start with? And are they aware that free advice is there for the taking, if they can just find…