Writing can be a lonely endeavor. With the obligatory cliche out of the way, let’s look at some methods of making it less lonely. At heart, all of these involve either finding a community of writers or finding a community of readers. Sometimes you can find both in the same place.
A quick search of the Internet will bring up suggestions of places to receive critiques of your work. The dedicated spaces typically work on some kind of points system, in which you receive points for critiquing the work of other writers and spend points to have other writers critique you. If you’re new to writing, this can be immensely helpful. You’ll receive (usually) honest feedback about how other writers view your work. Sometimes these opinions will be helpful, and other times they’ll be confusing. (Wait, why do I need a flamingo in the third chapter?)
At some point, you’re likely to outgrow such communities, but many people (including me) have found a small group of writers from those communities and moved beyond critiquing random fragments of work into full exchanges of pieces, weekly writing sessions, accountability partners, and other things helpful to keeping us writers on track and feeling connected to the world.
When you’re part of one of these groups, do your share. Most writers know who the selfish writers are–the ones who want your comments on their work but never reciprocate, or give only surface commentary–and writers tend to talk to each other. If you don’t honor your commitments, you’ll quickly find yourself out of the group. That doesn’t mean you need to spend a day each week reading other unpublished work; it means you need to commit only to what you can carry out. As a disabled writer, there are weeks I just can’t contribute, so my groups are more relaxed about timeframes. If you can steadily produce pages and steadily consume pages, you might want something faster-paced.
If you don’t want writerly commentary on your work, but just either praise/adulation or (less helpfully) scorn, then you might want to check out some of the instant-publishing platforms, such as Wattpad. These can be a great place to get your start if you don’t care about making money off of your publishing. Fan-fiction authors, for instance, often publish on these kinds of sites. (Fan fiction is great, and many masterful writers started there, with some still remaining there.) Just be aware that publishing on these sites means that you’ll almost certainly need to self-publish if you ever want to sell your work, as most publishing houses will consider your writing to be previously published.
Because I’m fairly reclusive due to (a) being in Japan, far from most people who write in English and (b) having mobility/energy issues, I tend to stick to online groups, but if you have a more in-person social bent, there are lots of groups that meet in person to discuss writing as well. Be sure to check them out if that’s more your speed.
Whatever you choose to do, though: get your writing in front of someone else’s eyes and/or ears. You’ll grow as a writer in both skill and ability to handle less than glowing feedback.