Writing Group

I'm in a study room at the local library. That's where we meet. My writing group. 

It's an odd collection of authors all in various stages of our quest to get on the shelf. There's a couple of folks that have been chasing this for years and only have journals of half written ideas to show. There's the prodigious young lady who's been self-publishing for years and has a whole series of mystery novels under her belt. The screen writer who blows us all away with her hard work and big dreams. The old man who writes whatever he wants and shares too much sometimes. There's more than a few of us who keep writing the same story over and over and yet somehow we end up somewhere different every time. There's the person with great ideas whose working on her execution and her opposite who just can't seem to think of anything to write about with her practiced prose. We were forged from a need to write and a desire to share. So we sit in a room that's too hot and try to help each other do this really hard thing that none of us have figured out for ourselves.

We talk about writing. What's working for us today. What sucked. Who's doing what and how long it's taken. Some of us talk with surety we haven't earned and others with timidity we should have grown out of years past. We write sometimes also. Prompts that confuse and inspire. Prompts that make moments of odd silence where we try to milk out some creativity and get juices moving that we let sit fallow over a week of procrastination or a week of getting lost in the wasteland of revision.

We look at each other’s work. Sometimes we say too much or not enough. Sometimes we are too harsh or not enough. Sometimes we just nail it and it keeps us together.  We love a lot of the same things and see some of the same movies. We compare way too many things to Lord of the Rings and then spend to much time contrasting Lord of the Rings books and films when we are supposed to be critiquing something else entirely.

If any of them get published before me, I'll try really hard to forgive them.

They are argumentative and combative and supportive and lovely. They help me be better. I don't thank them enough. 

Thanks my fellows. See you next week.