Breaking Up and Making Up with Your Writing Group

I feel like there have been so many things for me to write about since I’ve moved to Boston, but for some reason I haven’t been able to put any of it on paper (and by that I mean here, on my blog). I feel like I’ve lived a lifetime in these two months, and maybe that’s why it’s so hard to pick just one thing to write about. (But I’ll do better, because I’ve missed this.)

The reason I’m even typing this right now is because I can’t ignore the feeling that things are right at the moment. And when things are right, it’s kind of hard to stop thinking about them. They creep into your thoughts, your everyday conversations, your Google searches – don’t worry, I’m not talking about a person, I’m talking about writing groups.

I’ve been going to writing groups for over a month now. I’ve tried new ones, stuck to one I thought was good for a while, then stopped going. Let’s just say they didn’t have this feeling. Sometimes they were awkward. Sometimes I felt like I was connecting with people, but only on a superficial level. Something was off. And then, two weeks ago, I went to a new writing group that was starting up.

First, I’ll just say it wasn’t perfect. There were too many people, and we kind of all wanted different things, and I didn’t write one word that day, but there was something about it that felt good. It didn’t matter that it had taken me almost forty minutes by train to get to our meeting place. I wanted to come back to this group, with these people.

And then our group organizer stepped down, essentially citing irreconcilable differences. And yes, it felt like a divorce. Without a leader, who was to say that this group would ever meet again? Well, I decided to say that. I thought about it for a week (it might not seem like a big life decision, but it definitely felt like it at the time), and then I said yes, I’d organize the group, on one condition: if someone co-organized with me. I wondered if this was the time to be stating conditions, but sometimes you have to think about yourself first (right?) and what would be best for you.

So someone stepped up, and somehow we became leaders. Yesterday we had our second meeting. It felt simultaneously like our first meeting (“Hi, I’m Kristin, I moved here in January”) and like our twentieth (“You know, sometimes you just want to write about an elaborate murder”). And that’s how I knew it was right.