Saturday, September 26, 2009

Thirty-five Thursdays

The other night my writing group had our monthly meeting. The four of us have been writing together for three years. We're all teachers, and the start of the school year has been supper-hectic for all of us. Rather than crank out something for the sake of the meeting, we agreed to re-visit the first pieces we wrote for the group.

I was really interested to take a look at our early work and compare it to what we've been writing lately. Sure enough, there were some significant details and differences. Two of us wrote about events and people that would be fictionalized to become major parts of the novels we're playing with. Three of us wrote much longer and more detailed pieces than we've written in over a year. There wasn't any noticeable growth; in fact we laughed about how our increasing comfort with each other has allowed us to become kind of slackers.

I remember working on that piece for our first meeting; I was coming off my Writing Project summer, and my writing fluency was good. I was also really into the self-examination and discovery that the personal narrative genre can provide. I wanted to bring a piece I could share with confidence, too. All of those things added up to a thousand pretty well-crafted words, and I was pleased to find that the writing held up three years later but sorry that I haven't written anything quite like that lately.

And so, our meeting gave me some things to think about in respect to myself as a writer, just as I knew it would. Thanks you guys.

2 comments:

  1. Dang, but I'm jealous. I seem to go in fits and starts. Our writing group fizzled out quickly, and I haven't found another (with the exception of this loose SOLSC).

    Congrats on having writing "with legs," as my professor used to say.

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  2. Hi Tracey,
    I'd like to invite you onto the iAnthology Ning site we have up for former Writing Project summer alums. It's a great place to share and view writing. Can you send me your email address so I can send the invite? I think you will like it...
    Cheers! T-Dawg (Tina)

    gracedog11@yahoo.com

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