Writers Wednesday July 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

We all must admit that life often gets in the way of our passions, despite our best intentions.  That special talent — like writing for example — gets smothered beneath the daily checklist of work, family, paying the bills, and making sure the boundaries of our lives haven’t changed.  At least, that’s what happens to me, despite making new resolutions to commit myself to my writing.

So I walked into a recent Writers Wednesday at the Capital Ale House in Midlothian feeling … well, like a penitent going to confession.  After my last WW, I had been determined to get a draft together and head out into the gauntlet of a new critique group.  But the months had passed swiftly without any action on my part.  Would my fellow writers sympathize with my false starts?

Thankfully, I met a kindred spirit in Cathy Short, an ESL teacher at James River High School.  She was currently working on a manuscript for a YA sci-fi/fantasy novel.  This was her second Writers Wednesday and she was looking forward to having time to write during the summer.  As we started discussing workshops and conferences, Cathy said, “Wouldn’t it be great if there were an extra day in the conference for writing?  Or an extra room where an informal critique group could take place?”  We both brightened at the idea and started to talk logistics when another excited writer joined us.

Our newcomer introduced herself as Beth Stuhlman. Beth admitted she had overheard us talking about writing groups. She was currently taking writing classes at John Tyler and was looking for more support.  Her professor had told her about James River Writers.  “I want so much to critique and help and to be critiqued and helped,” she exclaimed.

Before introductions were properly finished, we were sucked into a group discussion with Cathy Hart and Lightfoot Osolage, both members of the Writers Network of Richmond, a multi-genre critique group that meets at the Barnes and Noble on Broad Street.  I’m still not sure how the happy accident of coincidences occurred.  Maybe the experience was a truism: ask and you shall receive.

What followed next was an intense discussion that I could hardly keep track of in my notes.  The five of us talked about getting into the right mindset of one’s character, how to do justice to the time and environment of a story as well as our own personal motivations and scheduling time for writing.  Hart encouraged us to come to the group’s meetings.  “A writing group makes me set my schedule,” she said, “I look at a calendar and realize, uh oh, I have to get something together for the next meeting.”

If we weren’t tripping over one another’s ideas, we were trading insights about writing.  Cathy Hart mentioned she was working on a Civil War-era piece; Beth mentioned that she was a Revolutionary War re-enactor and might be able to help with a few similar period details.  Lightfoot talked about how she wasn’t finished with her manuscript because she “hasn’t done enough bad things to her characters yet.”

The energy was dizzying and, when I discovered it was time to start back for home, I felt like I was leaving too soon.  But it was a long drive back to Fredericksburg where home, family, bills and boundaries were waiting for me.  I thought about a bumper sticker I saw often around my hometown; it said, “A church alive is worth the drive.”  I could definitely say the same about the right group of writers; tonight was proof.

After getting everyone’s email scribbled down, something Lightfoot had said stayed with me: “If you don’t write it, someone else will.”  Amen, I thought, amen.

Elizabeth Rabin, JRW website contributor

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