How does visiting the John Reed Club encourage Richard as a writer?

Sol, a member of the John Reed Club ­ a Communist literary organization ­ tries to convince Richard to attend one of their meetings. Richard is doubtful whether the Community Party has any sincere interest in the black community, but finally attends one of the Chicago John Reed Club meetings out of boredom. He is given a handful of Communist magazines and is encouraged to participate in Left Front, one of their journals. Richard decides that he will try to humanize Communism to the common man through his writing, and composes a few verses that are accepted by some of the Communist publications.

Richard begins to attend more of the meetings, and he realizes that the club has factional disputes, or fights between club members. The disputes are between the writers (those who are mainly in charge of Left Front) and the painters. Richard is elected as executive secretary to satisfy both of the groups. He tries to satisfy everybody on top of trying to keep Left Front published, though the Communist Party members think that the publication is useless.

This is a pretty interesting book that you should read to find out in more detail. But I would like to advise you on the book The Crucible, which I read several times and even wrote an essay about this book, in which I described everything that I liked.