36
The writer's group became one of my favorite monthly gatherings.
Perhaps that was in part due to the ego fuel it gave me as my 'trashy
tale' had been a big hit and I was quickly deemed one of the ones
to watch in the group. But ultimately I liked the fact that it
ensured I'd get feedback on my stories beyond the one word comment of
''fine'', ''nice'', ''good'', ''readable'' that the majority of
people gave me. I think part of the problem, there, is that
common fear of hurt feelings and so friends shy away from giving you
any detailed thoughts they might have about your work. If
you have a writer friend in your life do them a favor and tell them
about an area in their story that confused you, or that didn't seem
as good as the rest of the text. They'll, eventually,
thank you for it as it lets them know you actually read it and cared
enough to help them make it better. If you want to lose the
friendship, say it was ''fine.''
With Rochelle quickly fading out of the group, this became a chance
for me and Daina to car pool as we'd go to the meetings, there to
join us was the host: Suzi. One of the original founders of
the local science fiction club: Elizabeth. My friend from the
software start-up days: Pat. And my best friend's, Jeff's,
girlfriend: Ilda. We became the early core of the group and
the ones we could most count on to be there to review each others'
work. As the first Summer for the group came, we had two other
people join for a while, one was a poet with a history as a secretly
published porn writer, and the other was a channeling writer who
received her stories from a spiritual presence. In the case
of the poet, he was a fun addition and stayed with us for almost a
half year before finding work elsewhere and moving away. In the case
of the channeling writer...
Here's the problem, if you receive your text
from a spiritual presence and you bring it to the group, you can't
really submit it for feedback as, after all, you didn't write it and
it would be unfair to critique the work without the spiritual
presence's participation. Ultimately, the best the writers group
could be for her was a place to have us read the works and say how
good they were, regardless.
Still the whole idea of channeled writing fascinated me and I asked
if I could see her outside of the group to discuss her writing
process.
At her home, she told me of the typical work period where she would
sit down at her keyboard and wait to be informed. The
spiritual presence would stand in the doorway behind her and, when
ready, start dictating the next work to be transcribed. The reason
this fascinated me so was because when I was writing my own stories,
I knew I'd be 'hot' when my thinking of what to type next was
replaced by hearing the characters' own voices and I'd just make a
transcript of what was happening rather than thinking of what to
type. I loved these moments as it made the story go by quickly and
I'd just be the spectator who then went back and added some
non-dialog detailing once done. In some ways I felt these moments of
my writing echoed the channeled writing she did, but during our
discussion she was clear that hers came as a complete text and she
never had to go back and polish up the results, nor could she as it,
ultimately, wasn't her text in her eyes. Our meeting broke up
with a trip to a nearby foothills park where we went for a hike and
talked for a bit more. Once done, I thanked her for telling me about
her writing process and we went our separate ways, with me never
seeing or hearing about her since.
Another channeler in the group was Elizabeth, though in a different
way. She wasn't confident in her own thoughts when reading other
people's work and would instead tell us what other 'professional
writers' would have thought of our stories if they had read them and
what advice they would have given us. We spent many fruitless hours
saying, ''Yes Elizabeth, but what did you
think of the story?'' Ultimately we'd never find out
and her contribution to the group was as a good person for finding
typos and grammatical errors. One of the authors she most channeled
for us when critiquing our work was John Updike. Many years later
when I heard he was in town for a reading, I called her up and let
her know. She was confused as to why I thought she'd be interested
and when I noted that she was always telling us what he would have
thought of our stories at the writer's group she said that was all
well and good but, personally, she had never cared for his work.
After the call was over I fumed as she had apparently been spending
all that time giving us advice at the writers group that, had we
taken it, would have left her liking our stories less.
Suzi was the wife of a postal worker. They had recently moved in
from a rural Colorado town where she had focused her creative talents
on painting. But now in our little city, she wanted to explore her
writing side and had co-founded the writer's group as a way to get
going as, it turned out, she had founded a painting group in her
previous town to get herself going in that. As a result, she offered
her home for our get-togethers and we had our monthly meetings on a
regular schedule, whether or not we had something ready. If we
didn't, we'd talk about some ideas and generally be a social group
talking about life in general. While these things didn't happen on a
precise schedule, once the poet left our group, she found a new guy
to take his place, Martin. Closer to my age than Suzi's, they hit it
off big time and were soon co-writers producing many volumes of,
unfortunately, unsold work over the coming years.
Daina's work stemmed from her dreams. She kept a dream journal and
when having a particularly compelling dream, would use her writing to
explore that moment more fully and flesh it out into a story. Hers
were the most fun to read as, being based on an unreal event, they
would be surprising with deep emotional contexts and twists that
tip-toed the line between being disturbing and ever intriguing at the
same time. Often horror stories, you never knew what you were going
to be in for, but you also couldn't wait to find out.
Pat's work was much like my own in tone, though I tended to dabble in
fan fiction a bit while he remained pure with original tales. His
works were focused on the interaction of people as they dealt with a
moment, sometimes in a slightly science fictiony future, but just as
often not. By the Summer of Nineteen Eighty-Seven I decided I wanted
to do a radio play and roped him in to co-write it. I pulled two
tales from my stack, one dating back to my high school years, the
other a moment from my first conceived and never completed book. He
provided a perfect counterpoint for the middle, a short story in a
similar vein to the 'Fight Club' book that would come out eight years
later by another author. We twice mounted recordings of the audio
drama, once as a table read that was unusable given the pervading
background noise such an atmosphere invokes, then as isolated track
recordings performed in his home's basement. Ultimately nothing
came of the effort and the fault was completely my own.
Pat moved to Denver the following year but still came to our group
for a time, making the commute each month, before leaving it behind
after another year had passed. His seat was taken by, Ivan. A
retired Air Force military man with a thoughtful side, his work was
always a good read, though never really grabbed me.
Ilda was the replacement frenemy in my life. Her writing interests
were solidly based in fan fiction, though with the group she was
trying to stem out into original fiction. Her work was good, but
very rare to see and she was with us mostly for the social aspect, I
believe. One time at the writer's group I excused myself to use the
restroom and when I returned she was telling the rest of the group
how much she didn't like my work as I was such a misogynist... This
was news to me and I reflected on the comment for a few weeks but
could find no basis for it as my stories had an equal mix of male or
female protagonists and they equally went through peril, sometimes
surviving and sometimes not. If anything, I had written more stories
with male characters in tough situations. I ended up disregarding
her comment, though was left wondering what other negative things
she'd been telling about me to other people when I wasn't around.
Yet, it didn't impact our
friendly-enough relationship and, in fact, she was the
first person I thought of when I decided to get my ears pierced...
No comments:
Post a Comment