My Life: And My Writer's Group

I'm a little burned out with writing lately, and time is short, so I'll focus on a simpler topic than normal. Today, we'll be talking about one of the few groups I belong to that isn't directly geeky at an incredible level. It's just a little bit geeky.

You see, about a year-year and a half ago, while looking for inspiration and possibly a new place to meet friends (and girls,) I learned that a local book store had a writer's group every two weeks on Thursday. At this point, my writing was a bit more random. I wrote game design documents, and I did National Novel Writing Month almost every year (that's another blog topic right there,) but that was about it. And it was all designed to be processed only through me, at least so far. That's fine for what it is, but it wasn't helping me, either professionally or to be a better writer. I needed actual advice, evaluations, tests, or at least projects different from the stuff I worked on for most of my life.

The writer's group provides that. Through the able hand of the group's current leader, Paul, we go over goals, plan our lives, brainstorm for each other's work, and, in my favorite part, do writing challenges. These are little, improvised tests that last 3-5 minutes at the most and that had topics we couldn't know about until the last minute. This is exactly what I need as a writer. No simple write up of video game idea #25's spell list; this could be fiction, dialogue, description, or anything, and I had to make it up on the fly.

I find that my style, whenever possible, drifts towards irreverence. I go for the humor, usually of a satirical or surreal nature, if I can. I don't mind this especially, as everyone has their own writing style. But I have to admit that I worry it's a bit of a crutch, which is a common trait among humorists anyway. What if I rely too much on humor, to the point where it's difficult for me to write anything serious? But learning to write the "real" way is not an easy process, nor is it one you can do quickly, at least not when already stuck with unemployment. As long as I remain enthusiastic, I can improve. And I already got some compliments on the subject, both about the writing and (even more importantly,) the presentation. You can't just pass what you just wrote to other people, since that would take too long and most writers tend to have illegible handwriting anyway, ironically. You have to speak out loud, which is an unnerving concept at best for the socially awkward like myself.

I also enjoy interacting with different writers. Our group consists or consisted of a former nuclear scientist, a fiction writer, a verbal storyteller, a former financial writer turned magazine contributor, a poet, and much more. Each has their own story and their own style, making comparisons interesting and every writing challenge different.

It's not like everything's perfect, of course. Sometimes the writing challenges fall by the wayside as we focus too much on goals or discussions of specific writing elements, which don't tend to get us as far. And the group's still looking for a more specific level of organization. I get annoyed when our normal spot at the bookstore gets abandoned, forcing us to crowd in the coffee shop's little tables. Plus, well, the whole "meet girls" plan? This hasn't really helped. It's been a long time since there was a woman even remotely near my age there. My best bet has been to admire the barista from afar. But that discussion's getting into creepy territory, so it's time to move on.

My point, though, is that I generally do enjoy the writer's group. It gives me many things I feel I need; good friends not meeting by geeky necessity, a chance to grow as a person, and actual social demands, damn it. Not that I need more writing-themed demands after this month, but you know what I mean. All that plus the excuse to buy expensive coffee shop cookies every two weeks; that's more than worth taping Lost and The Office/30 Rock every other week.