The Positive Power of a Writing Group

Lately, writers in search of a writers’ group seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Maybe it’s the springtime passion following a dreary winter, a need to get out of our caves and reconnect with like beings. Maybe it’s the creative urge itself, coming to new life with daffodils and day lilies.

Regardless of the genesis, writers new and old resonate to the sound of one another’s voice reading the latest missive. We yearn for a safe place to try out our new work. We hunger for feedback that will help us hone our words to a keen edge. We need the company of like minds. Writers need other writers as much as we need readers.

If you’re on a quest for a writers’ group, whether joining one that is already up and going or beginning a new one, allow me to offer a bit of caution. Consider your goal. Are you looking for a critique group? Are you seeking camaraderie on the writing path? Are you desperate for someone to talk with who won’t tell you you’re crazy for spending your nights at the keyboard instead of sitting in front of the TV? Do you approach writing as a competitive sport? An outlet? A compulsion? A safe way to blow off steam? A holy mission?

There are no wrong answers here. Writing is all of those things, and a jillion other things to a jillion other writers. The point is, figure out what your writing is to you. Not to your mother or your spouse or the bozo in the next cubicle at work. What it means to you. Then you’ll have a good idea what to look for and/or what to build in your own writers’ group.

For example, the little group that keeps me going creatively is a support group. We’re quite upfront about that. Our purpose is not to compete with one another, not to show how much smarter we are than the writer next to us, not to tear down a piece of work. The group is comprised of three women and three men. Every one is a published writer. Among the six of us we probably amass ninety-seven tons of ego. Luckily, that is countered by ninety-nine tons of caring for each other.

Do we always agree? Of course not. Do we always agree about a piece of writing, or even a particular phrase in a piece of writing, or even about that one special word in a particular phrase in a piece of writing? Of course not.  But we’re mindful that different writing styles beget different phrases. We celebrate one another’s style even as our own style differs, because we realize how richly we are fed by our diversity.

What we are not, is a critique group. Right from the beginning, over a decade ago, we agreed that we get plenty of criticism from the world at large, thank you very much. What we need is acceptance as committed writers and honest appraisal of our work. What we need is a safe place where we can entrust exposure of our work, so we can make it better.

Obviously, this style of writers’ group doesn’t work for everyone. It might drive you crazy. Isn’t it nice to know that you have choices?

Writers' Groups are Life Blood for this writer

Writing is my vocation, avocation and passion. It makes me crazy and keeps me sane. Yes, all at the same time.

In the spring of 1980 I moved to Huntsville, Alabama, with the express goal of making a life, and a living, as a writer. Thirty-plus years later, I am still grateful every day for that move—physically and creatively.

For one thing, the lore about southern writers isn’t a myth. There really are more writers in the south. More attention is paid to the art of writing, and some status is carried within the title. Huntsville being Space City, USA, of course, we are awash in rocket scientists and positively inundated with engineers. Some of them are writers, too. At a recent conference I heard it said that Madison County, Alabama, has more writers, per capita, that any other county in the US. As the 2010 census is still being tallied, I can’t verify that statement. However, as a resident of Madison County I can vouch for the spirit of the pronouncement. 

For another thing, there are lots of writers around here who are strong supporters of other writers. Writers’ associations and support groups come in all sizes and genre. They are creative life blood for a struggling writer—which includes every one of us, doesn’t it?

Writers’ groups come in all shapes and sizes. The one that keeps me going, for instance, is very small. We meet weekly, in one another’s homes. My home is an old house with really little rooms. Hence, the small size of our group. Other groups meet at the public library, in church basements, at local colleges and universities, in the meeting rooms of banks and real estate offices. Life blood flows everywhere.

You don’t have to live in a county with a high density of writers to be part of a writers’ group. Look around. Check your local library for groups who meet there. Ask folks you meet in the daily busy-ness of life. My first writing group started with an introduction to another parent at my child’s school’s PTA meeting.

Life blood flows everywhere.

New Adventures

Who's to know where the publishing world is heading? At one recent conference I heard an oft-published-in-hardcopy writer declare ebooks the path of the future. (Yea!) At an even more recent conference I heard another oft-published-in-hardcover writer proclaim ebooks the bane of the universe. (Oh, no!)

A few weeks ago, a friend who is a passionate teacher in the public school system expressed excitement at the possibilities of ebooks for students: Just think of it—one little e-reader will have every book a student needs for classes, resources, research, recreation.

This past week, a university professor offered speculations on the future of textbooks—my books, my notes, my comments, my marginalia all at my fingertips in one lightweight, easy to carry reader. Sounds so good. But can I share that with my students?

Alas, here I am without a crystal ball. Clearly there's nothing to do but take a deep breath and leap into one's own future.

Therefore, this writer's next leap of faith will be into the world of ebooks. The new novel, Brushing with Death, is soon to be available for Amazon's Kindle, and Barnes & Noble's Nook, and various iProducts. Brushing with Death is a tale of art forgeries guided by spectral influences from the Other Side, of women struggling to raise healthy children in spite of devastating loss, of love that transcends cultures and mores.

Who's to know whether this new venture is the path to the future, or merely my own path to my personal future? Either way, it's an adventure.

Garbage Removal: Part Two

Final: Part Two of Two


In a way I’m sad to note, my friend won the battle, for I’ve carried the memory of her fearful anger. I’ve seen fear’s glower too many times, on too many faces, not to recognize it now. It’s change that frightens—and so, angers—my friend. Any change, for any reason. A new time slot for a television show. A different treatment for preventing dental caries. Peace. Seat belt laws. Garbage removal.

I hold my breath for my friend. She is a good person. She works hard to make a safe home for her family. She puts in long, concentrated hours at her job. She is a faithful wife and loving mother; she is a stalwart friend. If only the world would stop for a while, she might find a way to be happy. If only technology would put on the brakes so she could catch up and get comfortable with all the new hardware and software. If only the nations of the world would announce total worldwide isolationism, so she could figure out who’s her friend and who’s not and why it’s changed so in the last few years…or hours. If only science would put a stop to research, so she could reconcile faith with fact, could get some sense of how plants and animals and planets and string theory and quantum mechanics can co-exist, much less depend on one another.

It won’t stop, of course. If we’re lucky. If we’re lucky, technology will continue to expand our avenues of knowledge, our opportunities for communication and connection in the global neighborhood. If we’re lucky, nations will continue new dialogues and relinquish old patterns of enmity. If we’re lucky, science will continue the search for healthy coexistence on this sweet planet.

And if we’re lucky, we will learn to embrace a new day even as we release the old one with gratitude for its truths and relinquishment of its fallacies.


-end-

Garbage Removal: Part One

Part One of Two


A friend burst into my kitchen this morning, brandishing a newspaper and spitting fire.

“Look what they’ve done to us!” she exploded. She snapped the paper open in my face. “I know you never read the paper,”—no frittering time with mere accusation this, but straight on to angry indictment—“so I’m reading this to you!” She spewed the reading at me, her raging voice reciting an article that detailed our city’s revision of policies and procedures regarding garbage removal.

Garbage removal? I wondered in amusement. She’s furious about garbage removal? I took a deep breath, struggling to concentrate on the words rather than the rancor. It was a good decision, for it enabled me to pull away from my friend’s fury.

Such beginnings to a day are difficult for me. My home is a peaceful place; quiet; alive with contentment. In the mornings, when my husband and I flow toward the day like parallel streams thawing from a winter’s freeze, ours is a home of particular gentleness. The day will muddy our individual waters soon enough, thank you; we needn’t stomp through the silt first thing upon waking. So we putter about our rising rituals, wrapping each other in soft hugs, talking quietly, toasting the new day with a glass of water to splash down our vitamins. We have survived the years of hectic mornings gathering lunchboxes and homework papers, scrambling for matching shoes, refereeing escalating wars between siblings who wake in a contentious mood and can’t seem to get off to school without passing it along. We’ve lived long enough that it’s just us now, thawing the edges of sleep in the warmth of each other’s company.

So my friend’s early morning outburst was all the more unsettling for my lack of preparedness. I was, after all, still comfortable; vulnerable, one might even say, as it hadn’t occurred to me to gird my emotional loins, there in the kitchen, with the coffee pot gurgling and the cardinals feeding on sunflower seeds just outside the window. I was ambushed.

The cardinals, as it turned out, were a blessing. I could look at them and appear appropriately pensive. While my friend assumed I was giving careful thought to her reading, I could take a deep breath and gather my wits. Her words began to filter in through a sturdier receiver, now fortified by a shield of reason. Garbage removal, eh? Collection cut to one day a week, huh? Citizens having to pay more money for excess trash, are they?

“That’s great!” I jumped about the kitchen, arms raised in victory. “It’s about darned time! This is terrific!”

She stopped her reading, momentarily silenced by my unwelcome exuberance. “And…” she growled, continuing her reported litany.

“Can you believe it?” I wouldn’t be stopped. “It means we’ll start recycling more! Less landfill! Less poisoning of the earth!”

“Just where do you think we’re going to recycle,” she snapped, “since they won’t even take most of the plastics I put in the bin now?”

The discussion went on for the better part of our three-mile walk through the woods. If my friend caught the irony of that argument taking place in that setting, she never mentioned it. By the time we returned to the heavy scent of coffee, we’d agreed to co-cycle all acceptable products: we would collect the magazines, cardboard boxes, computer paper, various plastics and other recyclables from our homes each week, and carpool their delivery to the nearest recycling center that would accept a wider range of materials. My grin beat her glower.

[to be continued]

Travel Sis — Smokin'

Western New Mexico stretches out in gritty waves, a perpetual sea of sand inhabited by scorpions and sidewinders. Its voice is the wind, now moaning, now howling, now scraping its sandpaper claws against the metal sides of a motor home, or the soft skin of a woman on her way to Alaska. New Mexico shimmers with its own heat. It can turn a grandma into a crispy critter in less time than it takes her to walk the dogs and check the oil of her vehicle.

Nearing the Four Corners area—the confluence of New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Utah—the land is stripped bare. Other than highway 666 and the (very) occasional vehicle roaring along on its struggle to cross the desert, there’s not one thing under the sun but barren sand. It’s easy to see why no communications company in the world would waste a tower for cell phone coverage here. Even if someone could make a call out of this lifeless sandpit, there’s no guarantee she could last long enough to finish her conversation.

Travel Sis gripped the motor home’s steering wheel as she and her doglets neared Four Corners. “No signal” flashed on her cell phone screen. She chided herself for the anxiety that lumped like a stone in her stomach. Before she’d left Alabama, she’d spent thousands on repairs and updates to the vintage motor home so the big rig would take her safely across the continent. Still, thoughts nagged. What if something went awry in the middle of this oven of nothingness? She and her little companions would be at the mercy of whomever—or whatever—happened upon her.

She decided not to stop to take a picture of Shiprock Mountain.

Travel Sis’s rig did indeed carry her safely through the Four Corners desert, and on into Utah. It wasn’t until she entered Moab’s city limits that the engine started missing. Within a few blocks a loud knocking sounded in the motor. That was when the smell of smoke filled the cabin.

Pat the mechanic didn’t want to give Travel Sis the news. She was a nice lady. She didn’t deserve bad news. On the other hand, she and her little dogs were mighty lucky to have made it into the RV repair shop when they did.

Yes, the experienced mechanic told her, her rig was fixed and road ready. He leveled a long look at the petite traveler. “How far you going?”

“Alaska,” she said. “Will this rig get me there?”

Pat looked away, shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “If you’re careful.”

How can you be careful driving 10% grades on the Alaska Highway? How can you be careful on the rough, desolate road to Ft. Liard in Canada’s Northwest Territory? How can you be careful driving the frost heaves and boulders of the Cassiar Highway?

Travel Sis is grateful to have made it to Moab, Utah, before all hell broke loose under the hood of her rig. She’s grateful for Pat’s skill in getting her coach fixed and ready to go.

But, still ....

The lilt was gone from her voice when she called to tell us she’s heading home. “I’m disappointed,” she said, “but I’m not foolish.”

—to be continued—

Travel Sis — Wild Western Winds

She’s five foot, three inches tall. Her eyes change color with the weather, and whatever clothes she happens to be wearing, and her moods, and the state of her passion at the moment; they can register anywhere on the color wheel from aqua to emerald green to vivid blue. All things being equal, her eyes settle somewhere between aqua and turquoise. But, as everyone knows, all things are never equal. She’s a fine-boned, blond-going-grey purveyor of a blazing smile and a merry laugh.

Did I tell you she’s sixty-eight years old?

Oh, and did I mention she’s driving herself to Alaska? Alone?

She wouldn’t appreciate that “alone” designation, seeing as how she’s accompanied by her three little dogs. It’s true that her doglets, as Travel Sis calls them, are good company: great cuddlers, jolly walking buddies. They can’t help her with the 11,600 miles of driving, of course. She’s on her own for that. Ditto tending to the physical demands of caring for her 34-foot motor home.

It’s a long way from north Alabama to central Alaska, and home again. 11,600 miles, to be exact. Yes, I know I’ve already told you that. I happen to believe it’s startling enough to bear repeating.

Actually, she’s already got the first thousand miles behind her. She started her grand adventure by attending her daughter’s graduation from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. I went with her, across the mighty Mississippi, then across Arkansas and Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle, across the vast and sandy span of New Mexico—a landscape so wide and desolate that I could see the curvature of the earth. Between my window and the edge of the world were random stalks of dry grass, and between those were the twisted shapes of desiccated cacti.

The winds began in Oklahoma. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the western winds. I was born in El Paso, Texas, and lived there the first 26 years of my life.

Our family reminisced about the desert wind. I remembered not being able to ride my bike to school because the wind knocked me over. My older sister remembered the redness of sand-blasted calves when she walked home from school. My brother-in-law remembered sand in the refrigerator. (His memory won the why-I-hate-sandstorms contest.)

Oklahoma’s May wind was a living thing, a beast that roared and screamed and clawed at the motor home. It shook our little house-on-wheels until it woke Travel Sis and me at one in the morning. We slipped jeans over our jammies and put on our tennis shoes in case we had to grab the doglets and make a run to the safety of the concrete block bath house.

The next day we heard weather-folk reporting the night’s wind at a steady 55 miles per hour with gusts to 80 miles an hour. Hurricane force winds, they said, and Travel Sis and I shook our heads in grateful wonder at the sturdiness of the motor home. Hours later I watched in pure admiration as Travel Sis held the motor home on I-40 against relentless winds that pushed and battered and did their darndest to topple us over.

We made it to Albuquerque, to the exuberant graduation, to a dinner spiced with the joy and pride of extended family celebrating the summa cum laude success of our beloved daughter/niece. We refused to let the wind blow away our happiness.

Travel Sis is back on the road. She and her doglets continue their grand adventure, as I sit in my quiet office with the window that looks out on Alabama’s lush green trees and blooming flowers. I check my email every couple of hours. Travel Sis is consistently thoughtful in choosing RV parks with Wifi.

I’ll keep you posted as she explores North America. Again. Did I tell you this is her second time to drive herself from Alabama to Alaska and home once more?

Last time, she was a mere youth of sixty-three.

—to be continued—