My Writing Group - On My Team

Writing is often a lonely thing. With the exception of the intense times when I work with my editor and we correspond frequently, most of my writing moments are spent alone. I absolutely treasure my solitude for getting the words on the paper, but the rest of the business of writing (publicity, wondering if what you wrote is any good, waiting for reviews, coping with endless rejection) can be very isolating. Luckily for me, I have the most amazing writing group. Ever. I don’t even live in the same city as my group, and they're still amazing.

I met my group through the Toronto Public Library's Writer-in-Residence Program which at the time was led by author Cynthia Holz. This is a great program if you live in the GTA. Here in Kingston, writers can meet and get feed-back from authors through the Writer-in-Residence program at Queen's University, or with the Poet-in-Residence at the Kingston Library.

 
Cynthia met with each of us individually, and then invited some of us to participate in a six-week seminar where we had the opportunity to give feed-back to each other on short assignments. At the time, I had just moved to Toronto and didn’t know very many people, so this was a great opportunity for me. I was also dying to be a writer, but didn’t know how to meet other writers or get published. At the end of the six weeks, I asked if anyone wanted to continue as a group, and seven of us did. I offered my large, decrepit, chilly apartment, and once a month the others trekked up to Melrose Avenue to look at each other’s work. We didn’t know each other at all at the beginning, but gradually through reading each other’s work, we became friends. We spanned over fifty years in age, originated from four different countries, claimed as many different religious and cultural heritages, and came to the group with a variety of personal and professional strengths.
 
That was almost twenty years ago. The group has seen marriages, babies, divorce, illness and death. Two of us have moved away, but still visit. One of us, moved away and then moved back. We lost Anne Warrick to cancer in 2014 and still miss her very much. Through all of this, there have been writing successes. Ania Szado has published two books Beginning of Was and Studio St-Ex. Elsie Sze has written Ghost Cave: A Novel of Sarawak, The Heart of the Buddha and Hui Gui: A Chinese Story. Dianne Scott has published short stories in The Toronto Star, Taddle Creek, The New Quarterly and others, and has an awesome book set on Toronto Island that I’m sure will be in print soon. For years Elizabeth has taunted us with stories about a monk that keep us hoping for more. Roz Spafford’s poetry collection Requiem won the 2008 Gell Prize. She's currently working on a memoir about growing up on a ranch in Northwestern Arizona. Anne Warrick self-published a collection of fascinating  short stories for her grandchildren about growing up in England.
 
I love my writing group because they always agree to look at things, no matter how long or outlandish (it’s about a girl who hates the Holocaust, it’s about a lesbian governess in colonial India). They put in time and effort to give me constructive feedback to improve my writing. They ask probing questions. They phrase things gently but pointedly. (I wonder if readers will stay with you long enough to get to the “good parts.”) And, they’re excited for my successes, and encouraging through the long stretches of rejection and waiting. They remind me why I wanted to do this crazy writing thing in the first place: because it is good to go into story and reshape what we know about the world on the page.

 So here’s to writing groups and good friends. If you write, I hope you have people to send your work to for feedback and support. If you don’t, take a course somewhere - I loved Humber College- hope to meet some good people, and then rope them into being on your team for life.