The Writing Group

My big adventure this week was going to my first writing group get-together! I was one of six women eating cheese, drinking wine, and talking about writing.

(Which eventually segwayed, somehow, into a huge discussion on online dating?)

I thought the girls in the group were fantastic. The host, Maria, is the former roommate of one of my former roommates, which is how we connected. Sitting in her envy-inducing apartment in the village, I learned that Maria’s working on a memoir about emigration from Russia. Another girl, Ally, submitted a piece about the drinking differences between her native Australia and the US. Priya is writing about her two grandfathers, and just returned from a book research trip to India. Still another girl, Stacey, is writing about her real life mis-adventures in the world of dating, which may soon include one stormy week spent at SXSW with a semi-ex-boyfriend who works as a rock poster artist.

Are you picking up on a theme? All non-fiction.

I hadn’t realized this when I submitted a piece to workshop, which was a totally fictional, somewhat violent story I wrote four years ago and promptly put away and never looked at again – until now. I think people were horrified when they first started to read, thinking it was real.

So it’s not a group that I’ll be bringing a script to anytime soon, but it was really valuable for a few reasons:

1. It’s important to have a circle of writers to talk to and exchange ideas with. Not only can they share stories about their own creative struggles, but they know how to critique creative work.
2. As for critiquing, they’re fantastic! I submitted a short story, not a script, but we still debated over dialogue – which is the core of script-writing. What’s more, since I don’t think a writer should really fall under ‘scriptwriter’ or ‘story writer,’ but rather, be able to use whatever form is best for the story she's telling, it’s good to workshop things in different styles. Short stories can eventually be written as scripts and vice versa.
3. After being out of school for a few years, a writing group is a great way to get back into a ‘school’ mindset. In creative writing schools, the process is much the same as in a writing group. People read your work, then offer praise and criticism. You start to learn to read their work in the same way – what works, what doesn't? You develop an awareness of how to improve writing and provide intelligent feedback, which will help you, too, in the long run.

We’re meeting again on April 27^th. This time, maybe I’ll do something I’ve only done a very few times before, most recently with Memoirs of Meanness – write some non-fiction.