Writers Group Meets Today!

I cannot wait to see the gang! We take summers off to escape to cooler places or deal with families. Our first meeting is always a casual lunch at Sparky’s where we catch up on neighborhood gossip and what’s going on in each of our lives that we don’t already know. No one has to read anything or offer a critique, so we’re more relaxed. No one has to offer an excuse as to why they haven’t been writing anything either.

Mary Ellen and I have been writing during the summer…at least in our heads. We share a backyard fence now and have seemed to be back from our camps at the same time this summer, so we’ve talked about our poems a bit. I don’t know what Vince is working on. Jeffrey has kept me up to date via email on his memoir. We still haven’t replaced Deb, Denise or Demetri – the three former members who all moved away. If we do decide to replace them, we need to look for people whose names start with a letter other than “D”, I reckon. We miss these folks…..they’ve been gone awhile. We talk about having others join us, but we’ve become so comfortable with one another, it seems as if it might not be right to let anyone else come in. And could anyone really replace them anyway?

There are similarities and contrasts between the writers group and the songwriters circle. I think the writers group has more fun. We meet more often. Perhaps because we are smaller, we handle more material. I like the structure of the songwriters circle better and often wish one of the writers would run the group as efficiently when one of us gets off on a tangent and the others fail to bring us back to task.

I’ve missed these fellow writers. When we share our writing…in its rawest form with every flaw…we grow to know one another better than spouse or family often. I feel safe with them. They respect my politics, often share my convoluted view of the world. I know I can say anything at all around them and they’ll agree or just shrug it off as me being me. They are my sanctuary. And today I get to have lunch with them. I am indeed a lucky woman.