slooooow

Last night, my writing group died. We'd been together five years and had worked well at least 75% of that time. We set up a website, we put together a chapbook that sold out twice at the McNally Robinson bookseller, and we performed three times at the MWG's Freedom to Read marathon.

More importantly, we shrieked and yelled at each other every two weeks, cracked crap jokes, and looked for "It's brilliant! Brilliant! Don't change a fucking thing!" in each other's eyes even though we knew it was never going to come...

And then we tore each other's work to shreds.


The Wolseley Writers' Group at the launch of Ten Best Pages.

And even though after five years the group may have run its course, I'm in the strange position of still believing in each of the writers that were involved and the projects they worked through with the group's help.

I'm not sure what to do with those feelings. I guess I'll have to express them through my relationship with each writer but it's somehow not the same. It's like being nice to an ex. You do it because you want to, not because you have to, and our group was always heavy on the have-to. Because no matter what, no matter where we worked or lived or who we were sleeping with, we assembled in each other's living rooms and consulted scrawled copies of the material that had made the rounds in the week before the meeting.

Beyond the fact that I developed an attachment to these people, I'm still at a loss on how I'm going to find another consistent source of feedback and support.

I suppose in the meantime, I can thank David, Frank, Perry and Polly for the effort they made to make my work better.

(I can almost hear one of them piping up as I write: "Um...maybe you could try being a little less...sentimental?")

See you around.