August | 2012 | Lisa Stowe – The Story River Blog

What if you threw a writer’s group and no one came? Is it still a writer’s group if nothing happens between the writers?

Last night was the regular meeting of a writer’s group I have facilitated for several years. I really didn’t want to go. It had been a long day, I was tired, and to be brutally honest, the meetings lately seem stagnant. Don’t get me wrong; I really like the people who come, and have grown to think of them as friends. But here’s the thing. I think they (well, we) have become too safe.

The group was started after an upsetting event at a huge writer’s conference. I decided writers needed a place to meet that was safe and non-threatening, more like a support group than a critique group. Many of the people who attend, and have attended, have gone on to be published. We have poets, screen writers, non-fiction writers, fiction…and yet it manages to stay a small, safe place to be.

Over the years I have tried to stir members up. We’ve tried exercises, guest speakers, contests, adding time for critiques, etc. I even tried to get members to rotate facilitating. These things appear as a brief candle flame flare and then burn out. We end up back where it’s safe, with members talking about writing.

When I bring up that I worry no one is getting anything out of the group anymore, that we are all talking about the same things we talked about last year, and the year before, everyone jumps right in to tell me I’m wrong. They insist they leave the group wanting to write, that they get support and they learn.

Well then, maybe it’s just me. Which brings me back to last night. I went strictly out of obligation and responsibility. They’d manage without me, and have, and I could have skipped it but didn’t. And only one other member showed up. So there we sat, me drained emotionally, listening to familiar words, feeling like I had nothing new to add either. And then in comes a stranger. A young man who’d heard about the group, who is making documentaries and writing screenplays.

We had good discussions but it was hard for many reasons. I kept thinking, he’s not going to get anything out of this group. We’re all asleep. I don’t know that he’ll come back. I’m not sure I feel he should. I don’t think we’ll be any help to him.

So tell me. How do you wake people up, shake them up, move them out of ruts, challenge their thinking, make them quit speaking the same words, make them write? I include myself in those questions. How do I challenge myself as a writer? I no longer want to sit in the group and speak variations of the same themes over and over and over throughout the years.

I want my friends to soar as writers, but I don’t know how to help them, or me, find the needed wings.

On August 4th, during a wonderful Arts festival, I was asked how I would define myself. Immediately I thought of the things I do. The person who asked stopped me mid-sentence and clarified her question. How would I define who I am inside, not what I do. Well, that seriously stumped me. I still don’t have an answer. I believe I stammered something about being a storyteller. I thought about my love of trees and the forest, but didn’t know how I would put that into words for a definition of who I am.

As some of you already know, later that evening, a local man I know, and his dog, were killed by a hit and run driver. Being a small community, everyone is impacted. Being totally honest, sometimes I liked that old brindle boxer more than I liked his human companion, but no one should be left dying and alone, on a narrow forest road in the middle of the night.

This morning I walked to work. The road has no shoulder, the woods come right up to the edge, and with our rare sunshine, it was a beautiful walk. Until the first car passed me. They were polite, going slow, moved out around me. But still I couldn’t help but imagine the force of impact if they hit me. How it would feel to hit pavement, to be dragged, to be left? There isn’t a whole lot of traffic on this road. I could have been there for a while. As a writer, I wondered how I would describe such a thing and was unsettled by the thought, as if I belittled what he went through.

Further down the road, a memorial has shown up where this man and his dog died. People have been leaving mementos that reminded them of him, or that they knew were important to him. The dog’s brush is there with a package of dog treats. A shed snake skin because the man volunteered at a Reptile Zoo and had great compassion for his charges. An amethyst necklace. A ceramic dragon. A photo of him with his son. Flowers of course. Apples. Candles. A feather that looks like it came from a hawk.

Things that define him to those who cared for him.

So how do you define yourself? What would people who care for you leave in remembrance, leave as reminders of what they saw in you?

Paper and pen. Rocks (I’m always hauling home interesting rocks). A pot with a little tree maybe? Favorite books. Hopefully a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate. Garnets for sure. Tiny ones gathered from our river.

It’s a very strange thing to think about and makes me feel uncomfortable, maybe slightly maudlin or self-centered. But do think about it. How do you define yourself? How do you want to be remembered?

I’ve come back to the beginning of this piece, for me anyway.

As a storyteller.