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Once, with another woman …
Something stolen
While you were driving
These were my mistakes
In my grandmother's house
I'm thinking of …
Write about a summer fling
You are lost
What you see in the distance
You thought nobody noticed
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Of the many things an individual can do in the company of others, writing may be one of the few things that must be done alone. Right?
Here's our writer, feet stuffed into shaggy slippers, a holey cardigan tossed over hunched shoulders, she's alone and alone, working into the night, working in the cool silver glow of her monitor with only her dictionary, her stamina, her small imagination.
Writing in the company of others might be all right for classroom exercises or avant surrealist experiments, maybe some airy-fairy New Age outdoor camp fest, but Real Writers, they have to go it Alone.
Or do they?
The old idea of the writer as solo artist is an outdated as the belief that you can't make jam out of jalapenos. Writers can and do write in community. And they write good stuff. I know. I've participated in writing in real-time groups for more than a decade and I've led my own twice-weekly writing practice groups for nearly as long. This is what I know: On any given day a writer can write the best he's ever written. He can also compose a piece that's clunky and misshapen and downright embarrassing. Just like when he's alone.
I know that people who participate in these groups are often remarkable writers who paint word pictures, spin intriguing and complex tales, and take great risks. These are courageous writers writing in "real time," making it up on the spot and getting it down on the page. During writing-practice group, prompts are given and from these few words, stories and poems and essays and scenes from novels get written right then and there. At least first drafts that flare up wild as prairie fires or emerge soft as twilight in September. Seeds are sown, characters appear (and disappear), ideas take root, and notebooks get filled. Something else happens, too. A certain and electric current of connection, not just one writer to another, but one human to another.
We come together for real-time writing or writing practice because we have experienced the collective energy that occurs when we join, with writing as our purpose. Some call it the creative force. Magic. I say the Muse like to work crowds. Something happens when we write together that - if you trust it and go with it - can take the writing and the writer to unexpected, surprising places of memory and imagination.
In writing practice groups, we bear witness to each other's work, we learn from one another and spark each other's creativity. We share camaraderie and create community.
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