Writing Groups

I am always on the lookout for a writing group. It's as if I'm on the trail of a mythical creature -- I've heard they exist, I was in a good one for a while, and I'm eager to hear lore of how they work. The one that makes me drool is the one ZZ Packer is in, which was profiled in "O" (Oprah) Magazine. The participants fly up and down the west coast for meetings and they all sounded totally committed to the group and to each other's work. Very inspirational.

I was in a group that worked well for a year and a half. There were three of us, all working on memoirs. We met every other Thursday night and we paid a writing teacher to facilitate our work. No one was flaky and we took the commitment seriously. We got a lot done but then we each felt like we needed a break and never reconstituted.

After that I tried to start a group after I took a class at UCI but it was too much work to get it going. I watched someone else try the same thing, unsuccessfully, after a UCLA seminar. I don't know why it's so hard. In some ways it seems worse than dating.

I am in one group now whcih is very different from any writing group I've ever heard of. We meet every other Thursday morning at one person's house. We sit around her square dining room table and we each work silently on whatever we want for an house. Then, in the next hour each person recounts to the group how their writing is going -- their accomplishments, their obstacles, their goals. We have even started writing down something we will accomplish before the next meeting on an index card and giving it to the leader. Scary! Then we end with a short writing exercise.

It's so much fun and so energizing. No pressure about having something to read -- I just have to show up and work. We are all working on very different projects -- an entire spectrum of non-fiction from family narrative to almost academic self-help, with me being the only one working on fiction. We are at different points in our projects and our commitment. I'm finding myself looking forward to each meeting. I know I will have a good writing afternoon after I leave and that my momemtum might carry me through a good part of the weekend.