Richard Holinger wakes up most mornings at about 5 a.m. and puts on a pot of coffee before grabbing his fountain pen and sitting down at his desk to write.

The Marmion Academy English teacher’s routine fits the widely held image of the solitary writer. But on two Saturday mornings a month, Holinger takes a more communal approach to the craft as he leads meetings of the St. Charles Writers Group.

The creative writing workshop meets the second and fourth Saturdays of each month at the St. Charles Public Library. The group — open to anyone at least 18 years old — began in 1995 after Holinger, a Geneva resident, led an Illinois Arts Council short-term artists residency program in poetry at the library.

Holinger’s fiction, poetry and nonfiction pieces have been published in literary magazines such as The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, Boulevard, Another Chicago Magazine, Witness and The Texas Review.

For meetings of the St. Charles Writers Group, members submit manuscripts to be read and critiqued by the other writers in the group, who come from many backgrounds and professions. When a piece is being discussed, the writer must listen to the comments and is not allowed to speak.

“Some workshops only praise manuscripts that are before them,” said Holinger, who holds a doctorate in English with a focus in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. “I don’t think you can improve your writing that way.”

Holinger said he encourages the group members to give both positive and negative feedback in a way that will help their fellow writers improve.

“If somebody comes in looking just for praise on their manuscript, they don’t last long,” he said. “You have to really want to improve your writing.”

That investment in each other’s work has created a sense of community among the writers in the group, whose writing includes styles such as poetry, nonfiction, memoirs and fiction of different genres.

For newcomers, that style of praise and constructive criticism can be take some getting used to.

Michelle Pacione, a 38-year-old mother of three from St. Charles, began attending meetings in early 2006. After sitting in on discussions for about four months, she submitted a short story for the group to critique. The other writers were critical of the fiction piece, saying it lack authenticity, Pacione said.

It took her nearly a year before she gathered the courage to submit another piece. But when she turned in her memoir about her turbulent childhood in the northwest suburbs, it was well received, she said.

Everything she had heard during the group’s meetings helped Pacione strengthen her writing, she said.

“We tell the truth, even if the truth hurts,” she said. “We try to be as gentle as possible, but we tell the truth.”

Even more seasoned authors have found benefits in putting their work before the critical eyes of other writers.

Don Bingle, a 55-year-old St. Charles lawyer, began attending the group’s meetings in 2003, around the time he was trying to sell his science-fiction novel “Forced Conversion,” which Five Star published in 2004. He already had published several role-playing game adventures and short stories.

“It’s nice to be able to talk about writing with other people that write,” Bingle said. “Your friends and your relatives don’t really want to talk about technical writing things like voice or point of view.”