writing groups

Learning to Skate


I got my first pair of skates the Christmas I was seven. It was exactly two weeks to the day I got my very first two wheeler, a Schwinn Stingray – green with a banana seat. When I think about it now, I was hitting developmental milestones right and left as this was shortly after I had started reading on my own and beginning to tell time with a fair amount of accuracy.

Christmas night my dad took me over to the public rink at Flora Park. Just water frozen hard over the parking lot for the swimming pool, but when I was a child it was always packed with skaters of all ages and abilities. There was an old barn that somehow managed to survive the residential explosion and became a quasi community center that doubled as a warming house during the winter as the park was also a favorite for sleigh-riding on the hills near-by. My dad’s skates were those ancient leathery looking things devoid of any ankle support with strings so old they were double-knotted in places where they’d broken but he hadn’t replaced them. The rink was crowded, despite it being Christmas and the parking lot lights illuminated the entire skating area. Rock music blared from speakers up on the warming house. Dad laced up my skates as I seat on the passenger side of the front seat with my long for a first graders’ legs hanging out and then leaned against the hood of the car to put on his own while I wobbled and watched. It was always fascinating to watch my father perform some new skill that still seemed exotically grown-up to me. Though I could tie my own shoes at seven, the thought of lacing up my own skates with the same speed and precision as my dad made the two tasks feel completely unrelated.

My father taught me to catch a baseball by tossing them at me until my glove and the ball accidently found each other. This meant that often the ball hit me. Hard. And even more often it sailed by me and I would have to chase it down and run back to my abandoned post in order to be close enough to throw it back to him. He taught my brother and sisters and I the rosary by death marching the entire family through it every night for the vast majority of our collective childhoods even before my youngest sibling was capable of recitation on the smaller scale of singing her ABC’s. My first and only bike riding lesson in the basement two weeks earlier and consisted of him standing by the stairs in our basement with me on the other end of the room and telling me what I should do before turning and walking back upstairs for a smoke, coffee and to finish the evening newspaper. It shouldn’t surprise anyone then, that when we got to the ice he gave me short verbal instructions and then took off into the crowds, circling around periodically to make sure I hadn’t broken anything. And I hadn’t. I didn’t. By the time we left that evening, I could skate. Badly. But I could do it.

We got Katy her first pair of skates well over a month ago, but today was the first Sunday we actually had time to get over to the free public skate at the ice arena near our home. She seems to have inherited my natural athletic ability and by the end of the hour was pushing herself along with what appeared to be a start of a decent form. Also like me, she is a bit impatient and as we neared the end of public skate she made a few attempts to go it alone. No stand and no hanging on to anyone’s hands.

My horoscope for today told me I need to learn to be more self-sufficient. When I was a little girl, I was out of necessity because that was the way my father, and my mother to a lessen extent, parented. I learned not to ask for or expect help and I carried that lesson with me for better, and sometimes not, until I met my first husband, Will. He was probably the first person I ever leaned on and that time didn’t last long. So, I was not really sure what my stars are trying to tell me until I read the last bit of Stephen King’s advice on writing the evening while Katy was taking her bath. King was expounding on writing groups and classes and work-shopping in general and he basically said that a writer has to write a piece, a novel or short story or whatever, alone. That too much input during the creative stages is a hinderance. And now I get what the universe wanted for me to learn today. I learned it long ago actually from my dad that Christmas night at the skating rink. I saw it in my daughter today.

I really enjoy the time I spend at writing groups. It’s energizing and fun, but I cannot share works in progress or even first drafts that haven’t been read by my IR (ideal reader aka my husband). A story isn’t about the “atta girl’s” or the neat feeling that comes with people telling you that you are a good writer. It’s about telling the story. Just like skating is about getting on the ice and falling down until you don’t anymore.

Paragraffers Writing Club


Last night I went to my first writing group meeting since moving here to Canada. The group calls itself The Paragraffers and meets every second Tuesday at the library in town. When I first arrived I thought that everyone in the Fort must be a writer because the parking lot was full. Truthfully everyone in town thinks they need to lose weight and were there for the Weight Watchers meeting. I don’t think I have ever seen so many women happily walking through the door of any group whose existence depended on their inability to eat right and exercise regularly. Of course, if I get any happier or sassier, I might end up one of them. For last night however, I was there to check out writers’.

My last group was organized by a fellow widow and teacher back in Iowa. It was a group of just women, and we met once a month at a local coffee house. I have to confess, I didn’t have a chance to really get heavily involved though I did met some wonderful women. By the time I had gotten my feet wet, I knew Rob already and it wasn’t long before I was having to start my long farewells to a number of groups with whom I had only just begun to feel comfortable. What I had enjoyed the most about writing group was simply the conversation that spun off the writing. Sometimes it would stick closely to the topic at hand but just as often it would verve off into lively chatter about a range of things that were just as important in nurturing my creative spirit as sharing my writing was. The group last night was typical of what I am accustomed to as far as work-shopping goes. I have taken a number a writing workshop courses through the University of Iowa’s writing program, even taught the workshop model myself at a variety of grade levels, and most clubs base themselves on the workshop method developed there and fostered now on many academic campuses. Someone reads a piece aloud, or the group comes together having already read someone’s piece via email attachment or shared document file, and the readers offer feedback to the writer. In the college, or professional I imagine, setting the feedback usually errs on the side of criticism which can be brutal and of dubious use. Most of it though is jealous pulldown. No one, in my opinion, can be as snotty as an insecure writer. In the “laymen’s” writing group however, the feedback is generally positive and the critiquing meant to be constructive. There aren’t, or shouldn’t anyway, any ego’s at stake. Realistically there should never be ego at stake in any writing group. A person is either a writer or he/she is not, and comparing one piece of writing to another is like trying to decide what shade of blue is “the” blue. Blue is blue. Writing is writing. It is good or it needs work. For nearly every kind of writing there is an audience, and no one type or genre is better than another. It all depends on the tastes and needs of the individual.

The Paragraffers were brought together a year ago by a woman named Kathie Southerland. She was tired of driving into the city to attend writing groups and wanted something closer to home. The group’s size and participants varies from month to month depending on people’s needs, and last night I was one of six attending and one of two newbies. An engineer from Calgary named Brenda was the other newcomer. Though she downplayed her skills, I noticed that she was quite insightful when offering feedback and easily picked up on such things as recurrent theme and the way Kathie made use of past and present tense in her third person narrative of the tale of how her parents met and fell in love. It reminded me of Rob and how dispassionate he can be when editing my work. An engineer thing, I suppose. There was a junior high school teacher who moonlights as a stand up comic. Rob’s girls both had her for English. There was another woman, Christine, who might also be an minister just going by her comment about writing sermons, but I could be wrong. There was an elderly woman named Pat. She is eighty-six which reminded me of my Great-Aunt Liz who was still taking university courses to improve her writing when she was that age. Now, at one hundred, Auntie Liz merely writes the occasional piece for the local paper and contributes to the newsletter at the facility where she was forced to take up residence when she broke a hip at 94, slipping on the ice right before the weekday morning mass. There was another older gentlemen. Possibly in his early sixties. It was hard to tell. He has vision trouble and wears those thick glasses that remind you of magnifying lens that came out of Cracker Jack boxes long ago. Only, of course, his were much bigger.

The meeting followed the predictable pattern of meetings when new people are present and began with introductions. I hate introducing myself. Rob asked me later if I had been nervous. I can be notoriously shy. However, I don’t find myself reticent anymore when I am in my element. Those being nearly anything to do with education, widowhood, and writing. All three are topics on which I can expound and are groups I “get” on a deep gut level. I speak quickly however and I am acutely aware of my accent here, so I went as slowly as I could, consciously trying to not veer off topic as is my wont verbally as well as on the page. Being from the United States makes me a bit of a curiosity, and my widowhood and remarriage gives others a bit of pause. These revelations were might in stride though. After introductions come readings, feedback, more reading and more feedback and the evening ended with a writing exercise. Last night’s exercise was to take the first line of a poem, brainstorm and write your own poem incorporating that first line. For the life of me, I couldn’t do it. Probably because I am not much of a fan of the reading of poetry. I enjoy writing it, but I haven’t much interest in anyone’s poetry save my own. It’s just not my thing. I am always fairly free-wheeling with poetry too. When I taught poetry, I emphasized free verse and use poetic lines to literally shape the ideas in it. This appeals to kids who are frightened of the writing process in most, if not all, of its forms, and the idea of writing without rules finds fertile fields in their rebellious little souls. Mostly I taught that way because it’s the only way I enjoy poetry. I like a good acrostic poem to facilitate the learning of science or social studies now and then, but free verse in the early fall when summer is waning and the reality of another 8 months hits is like visiting the pumpkin farm before the first heavy frost. It’s all orange-gold and solid. I managed to knock out a tiny poem about how writing poems is difficult. Which it is without the proper preparation and inspiration. At least for me. Judging from the group’s newsletter, poetry rules for many of them.

The two hours flew by. I had forgotten what fun it was to sit with other writers. There is another group that meets at the county library in Sherwood Park that I want to check out as well, but I am definitely going to return to The Paragraffers.