Continuing with our current topic "Something New for the New Year"....I have joined a new writer's group. Actually the group itself has been around awhile, it's just taken me this long to remember to reserve Thursday mornings to meet.
What's really new is that this is a Zoom group. The members are friends from the Vermont MFA program and live in Minnesota or Wisconsin. I live in Atlanta.
Many years ago, before iPhones and texts and Zoom, I belonged to a metro Atlanta critique group. "Metro Atlanta" covers about 8 counties, and I live at the northern edge of the area. The rest of the group lived a couple counties to the east. The first Sunday night of the month, I would drive 100 miles, round trip, to group. Atlanta traffic is always terrible, especially Sunday nights when people are returning from out-of- town.
This did not stop me from meeting with the group known as WINGS. (This was so long ago, I no longer remember what WINGS stood for! ) They were terrific writers and critiquers, or I certainly wouldn't have made that long trek. These four ladies critiqued all but one of my published books. (My Best Friend sold just before I joined the group.) I could not have finished, let alone sold, any of them without their sharp insights and thoughtful questions. It was like having four editors, before sending my work to an actual editor.
We were as diverse a group as you could find. What brought us together was a passion for children's literature and a desire to contribute to the genre. We were each others biggest fans and greatest critics. The Women of WINGS were the best.
But as they say, all good things must come to an end. Members retired or moved or developed health problems. New members joined, but the group no longer was exclusively children's writers. There were writers whose work I was at a loss to critique (especially poetry). By then I was traveling to Mississippi once a month trying to look after my father, (which could be a whole book in itself.)
I became a former member of WINGS.
Without a monthly meeting to spur me on, my creative output shrank. Long distance elder care and the seven hour drive to see Dad zapped my energy, creative and otherwise. Some years, this blog was all I wrote. Dad died, but I was still driving to Mississippi to settle his estate and clear out his semi-hoarded house. Then COVID hit. I was drained. (Weren't we all?) What's the point of writing I thought. It's not like I had an agent or editor panting for my work.
I missed WINGS but there wasn't anything I could do about it. There wasn't another group around devoted solely to children's writing. (At least not any that wanted to new members.)
Then, I got an email from a friend from the Vermont writing program. She proposed that a bunch of us from the program and her local SCBWI meet weekly on Zoom. This would not be a critique group, but more of a support group. There would be a brief discussion of how we were doing and what we were working on. Then we would sign off for an hour, write, then check back in and talk about how it went.
This was the kick in the pants I needed to go back to a first draft that had been growing cobwebs since 2013. Knowing I couldn't write longer than an hour freed me. I can write for an hour! When I check in the next Thursday, I can pick up where I left off and go another hour.
I know. An hour a week. Big deal. Stephen King write all day every day, 364 (I hear he takes his birthday off). I think about Toni Morrison who wrote at 4 am before her day job. I remember my old self, writing in car pool lines and the skating rink where my daughter spent 80% of her childhood. But life changes. I'm ....gasp...older. What hasn't changed is my love of writing. The Thursday Morning Zoomers remind me of that. Sometimes we don't remember why we are trying to write in a chaotic world that doesn't support creativity. We tell each other that is exactly why we need to keep going. Thanks to the Zoomers, I feel pretty confident of finishing another draft of my book this year. (Now whether anyone will ever read it is another issue. I try not to worry about that.)
So that's my new-old thing--writer's group. Writing is a solitary pursuit. There is no schmoozing at coffee break or getting together after work for happy hour. Sometimes you. have to crawl out of your cave and communicate with your own kind.
Once again I'm in the middle of major life changes--downsizing while renovating our forever house--in another state. So mostly I'm plodding along, an hour a week. Is it working? Some Thursdays I write for another couple of hours after we sign off. For the record, I wrote the first draft of this post during my Zoomer hour yesterday.
Keep writing, y'all. The world needs us.
Posted by Mary Ann Rodman
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