Saving my writing life

Sometimes we use these at writing group

If I say that my writing group has saved my writing life, does that seem an exaggeration? Maybe, but it certainly has kept me writing through the dark days with lots of laughter and support.

I joined around spring time this year after my previous writing group finished, but if I am honest I had not been gaining much from it for a while and had found myself looking for excuses not to go. At the point of its demise I nearly gave up writing completely. I'd had a tough few years and nothing seemed to improving. Yet something made me look at Meet-Up and see what they could offer in the way of a writing group that was easy to get to and wasn't a trip in some dark part of London in the evening.

And I found them. We meet in the afternoons in a cafe by the River Thames in Hammersmith. It is a bit of a trek for me (a bus and two tubes), but I decided after my first time there that this was just what I needed. There is now a core group of around 4 or 5 and we meet weekly. Our leader always gives us a theme in advance (today's is fireworks!) and then we begin with timed free writing starting with one minuted right up to twenty minutes. We read back what we have if we want to. There's no pressure. There is a random word piece where  turns are taken to read while the others write. This is my favourite part.We break half way through for refreshments and then there is a poem to read on the theme before we go into our longer piece. Before we finish we do the game! We each write a paragraph to begin a story and then pass it round for the next person to add the next section. Once everyone has done that we read it back. It makes for some hilarious reading.

What this group has done for me is to help me find the fun and enjoyment in writing again. Nothing is being submitted anywhere and it frees my mind to write what I want, though on the spur of the moment like these exercises are  there's no time to think about it and one is restricted by time, theme and words. It works for me.

Without this group I may well have stopped writing. It's filling a need to be creative without the thought of the rejection email and the 'not quite the right fit' scenario I've been dealing with for an age. I am enjoying my poetry but I can see by my submissions book that I sent out one thing last month and I have to say halfheartedly. I don't know where my writing will take me in the future, but at least this lovely friendly group is a delight to be part of.

Here is a random word piece from a free-writing session.
I have highlighted the words we were given as we wrote (fitting them in is always so much fun.) This has had no editing and often they don't quite make sense!

She looked mockingly at the wheelchair in the hall as she shuffled through on her walking frame. The antique bowl on the telephone table reminded her of the day her husband had left in an explosion of words like the explosion of colour on the bowl -ranting and raving. She wished she had a wishing chair that day so she could have wished him away, all that cuteness he seemed to possess, that nit picking, like the 'bar stool is not a chair'. Everything with him was like a bus going uphill, straining on the gears. He'd never been a supportive husband. If only she'd had wings. Now she needed a wheelchair. If only it was made of Lego she could dismantle it.