Writer's Tuesday

My writer's group met again last night for our weekly "No talking / Just Writing" hoe-down from 7:15 - 9 p.m.  We all had such an exhilarating writing experience last week that we each bounded in the door of the Green Bean as if to say, "Ta-da! I am here to WRITE."

Alas, the magic did not hold. A couple of us ended up journaling for most of the session. Nothing wrong with that, just a bit disappointing when you show up hoping to capture a few more pages in the next great American novel. Another writer did some research in between pecking out the paragraphs on his laptop. We were all happy to see 9 o'clock arrive. And bad writing session or no, there's still a feeling of satisfaction of knowing you at least sat down and stuck with it.

Besides, we were all laughing about the imagined greatness of our last session. We all left thinking we had really mined some gold pieces in our work. One writer said he was so excited about what he'd written until he re-read it later in the week and found most of it to be crap. I had a similar experience in that I outlined a new idea for a middle-grade novel that I thought held great potential until I went back and read my notes and then I was like, "Yeah, that's boring. No one will read that."

Writing is like haunting flea markets and Saturday morning garage sales. One man's trash is another man's treasure, and you never know which bit of junk you put out there will actually bring you your first sale of the day. So it's best to just stick it all out there on the lawn.

Cheers,

Dena