Writing groups. Are they helpful?

I have been trying to get back into my writing again recently.

Getting time at the moment is really hard with taking care of the little one, she’s a full time job all on her own.

I am not working just now and it’s really difficult to find a job right now, I can’t go back to a call centre job. I did that for 15 years I am not going back, if I did I’ll probably end up insane and suicidal again so it’s not happening.

I have been thinking a lot about plunging back into my writing but I’ll be honest I’m scared to do this. In the back of my mind I keep thinking that being able to write the first novel was a complete fluke. So it’s a daunting prospect.

That being said today we got the spare room cleaned out, you can actually get in to it now, I have my desk, chair and everything else set up in there so now I have a place that I could potentially write.

So back to the topic of this post I have been thinking about joining a writing group.

Tonight I Googled any in the local area and I have found one that meets on a Tuesday night abd I’m thinking about joining.

I know that there are a lot of writers on here and I wanted to ask if anyone here has ever joined a writing group and if it helped?

I do consider the community on here as a writing group and I love the feedback that I get from you lovely people but this is daunting, it involves “real people” and real people are scary.

One thing that I think would be good for is meeting new people, as I said before I don’t really have any friends in real life so this may help.

So what is your opinions on writing groups?