Writing is a lonely, lonely job. Unless you’re fortunate enough to have a staff position at a media company, a writer will spend their working hours in a bubble of solitude. It’s possible and likely that a writer will spend days or decades without conversing with other human beings unless saying, “Number one, with cheese,” counts as conversation.
One possible solution to the loneliness is to join a writer’s group, where like-minded word artists can meet and discuss the work and passion of writing. Such groups will help inspire, motivate, and blow away the cobwebs of a lonely writer’s mind! Or so I thought.
After quitting SparkNotes in March, I’ve been back to my freelance gigs and personal projects which offered lots of time for my brain to turn to mush in the soul-smashing loneliness of my home office/bedroom. While I like my quality Dan-Time, I also miss talking to other writers/editors/etc. and so I decided to try a writer’s group.
I won’t mention the group’s name or location, but here is what happened during my first and only visit to the writing group.
There were six members of this group, including myself. The group had been meeting for a year so far when I decided to join. During each 90-minute meeting, writers were asked to read their latest works-in-progress after which the works were discussed by the other members.
The readings began. First up was a woman in her mid-sixties who wrote and self-published tragic romance novels. Her latest work was about…I’m not sure. I think it was about a dancer who was lonely and dying. It may have been about a swimmer? It was hard to tell as this woman mumbled through her work without any inflection. Judging by the sound, her ten pages were one run-on sentence and one of the characters may have been named “Clrufffm” who had beautiful “Hhhh.”
After she read, the other members chimed in with gushing support saying how fantastic this story was and how they all enjoyed the young character’s naivete. Fair enough. While I couldn’t understand what this woman read, it’s very possible that my ears are just dumb. Besides, a work of prose should not be judged by the way it sounds when read by a less-enthusiastic performer.
Sad romance stories aren’t my favorite brand of fiction so I had nothing to offer and remained silent as the next reader presented her work.
Writer #2 was a woman in her late 20s who was working on a memoir, which she pronounced as “mem-wah” in a condescending tone that will surely force the entire world into saying it that way.
Writer #2’s mem-wah was about her dead brother. The other members loved it. Not me. I had read multi-paragraph greeting cards that were less sentimental. Writer #2’s story was sad, sure, but also poorly written. Again, I said nothing because how the hell can you critique a story about someone’s very real, and very dead brother?
Writer #3 wrote about sexual abuse. I said nothing.
Writer #4 wrote about her dying mother and deadbeat ex-husband. I said nothing.
Writer #5 (the only other guy in the group) wrote about a woman who broke his heart and how that feeling felt like “the ocean.” I don’t know what that means but “the ocean” is an exact quote from his work. I said nothing.
Writer #6 (That’s me!) wrote the beginning of a short story called “Birthday Wish Museum” about a crazy man who captured all birthday wishes in a museum/prison (that’s why birthday wishes never come true) and then one day the museum walls crack open and ALL the birthday wishes that have ever been wished become true at once. But I said nothing.
I didn’t want to read my story. It wasn’t about death or sexual abuse. I didn’t compare my own emotions to bodies of water. My story wasn’t based on a tragic event (though none of my birthday wishes come true, dammit!) and so I felt out of place. When asked to read, I passed.
Clearly this writer’s group was interested only in the sad stories. This was not a place to let your creative mind loose. It was place to try and one-up each other with horrible events.
“Oh, your granpa died? Well my sister-in-law just got diagnosed with cancer!”
“My step dad stole my piggy bank when I was 7!”
“My cat froze to death! Here…let me read to you why such a thing is sad. Because it’s sad, you know? [clears throat] Darkness swallows the sun like an ocean….”
I understand the need to express tragedy through words. This writing group is a fine, adequate writing group for such word smiths. But I’m not interested in sad-sack writing. I want something else. Something new. Something I haven’t seen before.
I didn’t return for the next weekly meeting. This writing group wasn’t for me. I wish all the writers in the group luck, and I’m sure some of their works will find literary success on the shelves at the bookstore that I never browse.
Are all writer’s groups and creative writing workshops like this? Hope not.
I just want a writer’s group that’s more…fun. And, dare I say, funny? We have the capacity to make up ANYTHING we want and write it down and make it real! With all that power, why waste it by writing the same sad stories that we’ve seen time and time again?
There are thousands of books written about loss and abuse. How many have been written about a birthday wish museum?