My Writers Group

I hosted our writers’ club at my house today for the last time. When Covid hit, we lost our meeting room at the library and floundered for a few months. I still wrote, because. . . that’s what I do. It’s hard for me NOT to write. I feel lost, out of sync. And after a few days, HH says, “Wouldn’t you like to spend the day at your computer?” LOL. I’m a better person when I write.

When I talked to my writer friends, though, most of them weren’t putting words on the page. They use Scribes as their motivation. If they volunteer to be readers, they have to produce something to share. But we were all being careful, not going many places, wearing masks when we did, and only getting together with a few people we knew were being careful, too. So I talked to my husband, and he said, “Why not?” Then I invited my group to meet here. Now, when we met at the library, when the meeting was over, we went to The Tower Bar and Grill to yak with each other, or sometimes in the summer, we went to the Deck at the Gas House downtown. No restaurants were open because of Covid, so I decided to make food for my group. too.

The sad truth is that it takes more motivation for me to dust my house than to cook. Some of the members thought I was being a nice, wonderful person, but the truth is, I love to cook and I love to entertain. I had a new group of people to use as guinea pigs for new recipes I wanted to try. And the second and fourth Wednesday of each month became a lot of fun for me. I got to see my friends, talk writing, and try out new things. I loved it. I just never expected it to last as long as it did. I made shrimp pizzas, Cuban sliders, chicken quesadillas, and lots and lots of soups and salads.

But the library is finally opening up and letting people use meeting rooms again. It’s time for us to go back to the norm, even though the “different” was actually a lot of fun, and it made Covid a lot easier to deal with. The good news? People are making headway on their books. And I get to hear that progress, one chapter at a time. I’ve gotten to read a few times from my new mystery, and I’ve gotten a lot of encouragement. Not just because I feed my critics either. They’re too honest to bribe:)

Life is starting to get back to normal for us, and for that, I’m grateful. But I’m also really grateful for my writers’ group. I’ve heard horror stories about bad ones. I know they exist. I’ve heard of groups that only pat each other on the back, too, but we want honest feedback. I treasure my fellow writers. We encourage each other without pandering to lackluster writing, always prodding each other to do better. I honestly think we’ve all become darned good writers. The thing we’re not as good at is marketing and networking, but we’ll have to work on that at another time. We survived Covid, and that’s enough for now.

Nothing lasts forever. Things change. So who knows what the future holds? But for now, I’m grateful for Scribes. And I’m celebrating our local libraries being open again.