Monday, September 20, 2010

On Writing Groups

So the past few weeks I have been genuinely missing the writing group back in Quark. It seems like that nostalgia would be a good source of a post, so here we go.

I first attended the Quark writing group almost seven years ago, at the instigation of my good friend Aneeka. Well, she’s a friend now; at the time she was just a vaguely terrifying, anonymous internet person who managed to notice that I had signed on to the Quark internet forum out of curiosity. She managed to wheedle the fact that I wrote as a hobby out of me and invited me to a meeting, where she became far more concretely terrifying. :)

In that writing group I quickly found a solid group of friends and fellow writers, one of whom turned out to tolerate me enough to marry me. The continued support and feedback I got from that group, as well as the social interaction and friendship, allowed me to view my writing in a new light and get serious about forming my stories into something much more effective. My writing group friends quickly became an inspiration to not only continue writing, but expand my abilities. I even began to first consider my lifelong dream of actually publishing something seriously after I was involved in the Quark group.

Now, however, my old writing buddies have scattered to the four winds, and I seem to be hurting for lack of a similar group. That direct encouragement is something I miss, although I’ve preserved it in some form by having some of my old friends read things over for me from time to time. Still, it just isn’t the same as having a group discuss a bit of writing together, with that same amount of discussion and support that comes from a direct meeting. Finding one here in Houston might land me in the middle of a bunch of teenagers writing Twilight fan fics, which is something I would not look forward to, but gathering the old group is more or less impossible. I doubt that everyone could make their way to one location from Japan, Utah, the West Coast and Houston to one place to have a writing group, and the wide diversity of time zones kind of stops any attempt at internet groups. Grg. I may simply have to resign myself to the fact that the Quark group was a unique opportunity for me in terms of my writing development, but it would be awesome to have some of that same motivation and inspiration right now. Oh well. To good editors and better friends, wherever they might be. May all go well for you, and at least one of us get published so we can all get bragging rights. :) See ya!

6 comments:

  1. I miss the Quark group too. Out of the several groups I've been to over the years, including the one I attended a few weeks ago (http://46dogs.blogspot.com/2010/08/writing-meeting.html), the Quark group has been by far the best organized and most valuable.

    I really want to start one, I just have to find a way to get the word out.

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  2. Same here. I've been a bit stagnant in my writing lately, since the kids take up so much mental energy. I hope to get back into it soon, but I have no one to kick me into gear.

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  3. Ha ha. I'm in the exact same boat. So if we're all trying to find a good writing group, why don't we try meeting on the internet? I'm the only one with the bizarre time zone in Japan and I'd be willing to wake up at an insane hour to make a writing meeting because of it.

    I say we should try it! Anyone with me? :D

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  4. Hey, I'm all for trying to make it work somehow. I mean, if we managed to coordinate Larinia, this can't be much harder, right? I was actually wondering if we could cofound a blog and post our most troublesome sections up on it for the others to comment on. That way we wouldn't even need to be on at the same time, and we still get a discussion going. What do you think?

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  5. I thought we had a good website at one point. Remember that SOS website that Aneeka and Drek co-built. Why did we ever get rid of that? It had a gushing red ink pen at the top and you got points for reading and critiquing stories.

    Yeah, I miss the writing group too. Those were some awesome fun days. We should have a reunion one day. Meet up in the fourth floor of the HBLL or something. lol!

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  6. Yeah, those were definitely good times. I've stuck around Utah in order to be closer to the writing community here, and I've had some networking opportunities I wouldn't have otherwise had, but nothing really huge. It would be good to get together again, even if only via the internet.

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