I belong to two writers groups that meet biweekly. This is a luxury for someone always complaining about not having enough hours in the day. I have to travel to the city, with the one hour commute both ways that entails in order to share pages.
It happened by accident. About a year ago I was looking for a group to join, partly to reconnect with writers like in the old grad school set-up and partly to get out of the house...I work from home with the 2.5 year old. When I see daylight up ahead I run for it.
I joined this writing group affiliated with one of the film groups in the city. Writers Group A meets in a public space in the city, has great, friendly non-professionals and is run by this astute earth mother type. I learned so much testing pages and hearing them read. And then about four months into it, I get an e-mail from the earth mother saying the biweekly meeting's canceled and that she'll no longer be running the group. What's more, we get a notice that the group is on hiatus. I fall into a paroxysm of grief. But I'm on page 30 of my rewrite...I need to get through my draft. (Yeah, yeah, it's all about me.)
So when I hear murmurs of another group starting up with one of the one-time attendants of Writers Group A, I'm there. But it feels weird to dump pages on them from the middle of the script so I bring in something else, a new social drama, which Writers Group B tears apart. Writers Group B is run by quasi-professionals, from a cozy loft on the West Side. Unlike Writers Group A where you can bring in pages every session, you have to sign up to read in Writers Group B, though no one ever seems to want to sign up. Writers Group B is far more social than Writers Group A. There's a person assigned to bring munchies for each session and I'd bet about 45 minutes goes by in chit chat, writing exercises I'd rather not do, and interaction with the resident dog.
Then out of the blue, Writers Group A resurfaces. Earth mother returns and having only been to a couple sessions of Writers Group B, I go back to the old fold. And it's good. The sunny musical comedy is well received. I get great suggestions for how to make pages work better. And I know the fact that the script is in semi-decent shape is a result of having workshopped it for the last couple of months with cool, unpretentious Writers Group A...but I still feel the need to prove myself to Writers Group B. I like their toughness...the professor who rolls his eyes as he says, there's no tension. I miss that in the over polite industry world that never tells you your work sucks to your face.
Right now, of course, I'm putting off making the choice. I love them both. The West Side artist's loft with the gourmet snacks and cynical semi-pros who never seem to want to bring pages, and the energetic group of largely unproduced writers who meet in the public space where you have to speak up because the guy's cleaning the tiles with that floor vac, and where out of your eye you can catch the homeless man taking a nap on two chairs pushed together. But at some point I'm going to have to give up one. They will clash...I will get caught... and I will have to choose.
I ain't got a clue what to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment