“Hi,” I said, stepping into the room with that “I think I belong here?” look on my face.
It was my first night of a new fiction writers group that I was trying out. This was pretty much a blind date situation. I’d found mention of the group on the web site for the local writers’ association. It was titled as a fiction group, and the description basically said, “We’re a fiction group. We meet twice a month. Email (address) for more information.
On the day I found this notice I realized that they were having a meeting that very night. In mild fit of enthusiastic discovery glee I got home from work, cleaned up and changed, packed all my writerly things into my bag: laptop, some story hard copies, pens, CDs, etcetera, and headed over to the meeting. I arrived a few minutes early, and the door to the lobby was open, but the main door was locked. I waited until the 7pm start time. Nothin’. I waited five minutes. Still nothin’. I waited another five. Some dude walked through who apparently was doing sculpture in another room. He smiled. I smiled back and looked like I was sitting on the floor waiting for something to happen, which is precisely what I was doing. I waited another ten minutes, and at twenty past the hour, gave up on my mission and returned home, puzzled.
Still puzzled (a five minute drive did nothing to quell my curiosity – I’m just that tenacious), I pulled the web site up again and sent an email to the address. Again with the waiting. One day. Nothing. Two days. Nothing. About six days later I was fortunate to actually have some time off from work during the day, and I stopped by the writing center office (which is conveniently only open during standard business hours exactly like the ones I work myself). I poked my head in the door and asked what was up with the fiction group. The nice woman in the office kindly informed me that the web site had been having problems, and the folks with related email addresses had not been getting their email, but that it had just been corrected that very morning, and I’d surely hear from someone shortly.
This turned out to be the wonderfully true, and I received an email form the leader of the group within 24 hours of that conversation. He apologized for the delay, and gave me a few bits of information about the group, general size and whatnot, and the meeting dates. In a follow-up email he explained that they’d “had an event” and wouldn’t be meeting until the 16th of July. Okay, all good in the hood…but I still didn’t know much about the group!
So here I was, resplendent in my “writer’s finery” (which was adequately distressed-looking blue jeans and a suitably casual yet stylish long sleeve T-shirt), laptop bag over my shoulder, face to face with what looked like – a small business meeting! There were several gentleman sitting in the corner of large-ish room inside of a square of couches and chairs. The youngest guy was probably seven or eight years older than me, and the oldest guy looked like he might be in his seventies. Dress slacks and button-downs were in full force. My brain was going, “Uh…where are the writer dudes? Shouldn’t there be at least one kid here who looks like he works at Starbuck’s while trying to write the next great American novel featuring a cast of characters that work at acceptably hip jobs like coffee shops, bars, and record stores? And…where are the cute, geeky girls???! Gah!”
With all this going through my head I smiled and said, “Is this – uh – the writers group?”
“That’s right,” answered a man in the far right corner of the furniture-delineated square. “Have a seat.”
Expectations duly smashed, I took a seat at one of the couches and introduced myself. Negativity and Positivity are duking it out in my head: “Oh, shit. What the hell am I going to have to sit through?! I’m not gonna meet any cool writers that I’ll bond with and then start sharing fun and exciting writer-type emails with, or hanging out with at coffee shops while we craft our masterpieces – and there aren’t any girls!” and then there was the part of me that made some sense “Dude, cool it. These guys are writers. They are in a writing group, and you are NOT, at least not quite yet. By that very fact, they have an edge in literary awesomeness over you. You are a rookie. You had a great thing going in your old two-person group with Adam, but this is a different story. Besides, a number of the writers you read and like are so damn old they’re DEAD! One of these guys could be some sort of word-wielding genius who could smite your ambitions with a single keystroke of his vintage manual Royal typewriter. Sit, listen, and be open. You are right where you need to be.”
So I sat and listened, and here’s what unfolded.
Most of these gentleman were guys just like me who just wanted to write. Largely they were unpublished, with a few having some works out in the public arena. We had no presiding Tolstoys or Hemingways, but they were all serious about what they were doing, be it fantasy, children’s lit, historic fiction, or weird crap like I write. Based on their plain-spoken intentions, and the fact that they all were really writing stuff, and had it sitting there with them to prove it, things seemed to be looking pretty decent.
Turns out the group has had as many as a dozen people, and as few as four or five. At one point I guess they were so big they had to meet at the tables set up in the same room, and they had to set a limit on the number of works that could be reviewed at each meeting, as meeting times had started pegging the three hour mark. The group has been meeting for a few years now, though there are only two “old guard” members left.
The structure of the group is that works are sent out via email during the two week intervals, and the individuals review and make comments on hard copies. At the group meetings the comments are then made public to the group. While comments are made the author is not allowed to speak unless a minor point needs to be clarified. This avoids continuous interruptions for the commenters, and it also allows the author to hear exactly how their work would be perceived if handed out to a total stranger, as would be the case if the work were published.
Comments are not meant to be flames. It is suggested that they take the form of impressions as in, “Well, I had trouble with this paragraph,” or “I kind of got confused about who the character was addressing here,” rather than, “You should change this scene, and put these people in a car,” or, “They shouldn’t cuss so much.” The above two guidelines for the group really made sense to me in two or three levels, and seemed well-designed to provide for a constructive and productive atmosphere. It seemed to me that the group had been around long enough to hammer out all the bumps and create a good feedback environment. I was pretty sold on that.
As I was new I took it upon myself to simply be a listener and relax. Everything went very smoothly, and I enjoyed my time in the group, lack of hip youth and females notwithstanding. Ultimately, I’m there to write. In some fashion or other this is helping me get connected with a writing community to which I’d previously been denied, if only by my own reluctance to search it out. I’m taking steps to be involved, and I’m pretty happy about that. Besides, the guy who looked like he was seventy? He used to race roundy-round cars back in the fifties! Rock on with that. Oh, and the group leader says he’s thinking of buying a motorcycle. I smiled, thought of my BMW, and told him I’d be happy to speak with him on the subject.
I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting of the group, but I’ll happily toss out those expectations of perceived hipness and youth for what I did get – a chance to interact with writers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go review some fiction for next week’s meeting.
