Since it’s the home of Hollywood, California probably has the most disproportionate share of writers of all the states in the union, with the possible exception of New York City and Washington D.C.

We don’t pretend to list every resource in California, but we do want to be as complete as possible–as always this is to be considered a work in progress.

CALIFORNIA WRITERS GROUPS

The San Francisco Writing Salon–this group features DAILY workshops, classes and activities for writers of all kinds. They have locations in San Fran and Berkeley and have been running since 1999.

California Writers Club is a large organization with chapters all over the state, including Tri-Valley, Mount Diablo, Marin, Redwood, and the usual suspects in the Bay Area. 2009 was their centennial year! Nothing like a writer’s group older than most (all?) of the active writers in America.

Southern California Writers Association is an “all genre” writing group featuring monthly events that include guest speakers of note including Ray Bradbury, Stephen J. Cannell and Lew Hunter.

Independent Writers of Southern California offers writers monthly meetups, seminars and panel sessions. There are plenty of things for fiction writers and those who want to have books published in general. We like the fact that while this group is membership-based (with a subscription fee) they do have events open to non-members and plenty of satellite groups to choose from in areas like Orange County, Pasadena, and elsewhere.

South Bay Writers is a group based in Salinas, and offers the SBW Learning Center, workshops and general meetings. This group’s recent offerings included seminars on how to pitch to agents and publishers, so it’s easy to see that book-oriented writers will find much to do with SBW.

Long Beach Writers Group has a local meetup weekly to read manuscripts, do critiques and talk shop.

LinkedIn members should have a look at the California Writers section for networking purposes.