Thursday nights have become my favorite night of the week. I have exchanged Ugly Betty and Grey's Anatomy for a dinner date with myself and a two hour chunk of time to do nothing but write and talk about writing. I think I've mentioned that I've been attending a Thursday night writing group. Although it certainly isn't the group I always dreamed of having it still feeds me. I imagined connections and friendships and deep talks about the relationship between the self and the words. Instead there are just two of us, me and the facilitator, and we don't have contact outside of Thursday nights. But I'll take what I can get and continue to wish for, pray for, conjure, a group that meets more of my need for creative and truthful expression.
Even though it hasn't been all I dreamed it would be, the opportunity to meet once a week, write, and share my words with a fellow writer has gifted me in many ways. It is giving me confidence in my voice and my ability. I'm writing with a young woman who has her masters in creative writing (or something like that) and I'm finding that I can write right along side her. I can hang. She has more education, and in some ways more experience, but I haven't sensed a huge separation between us as far as the level of our writing goes. And that was something I feared when I first begin attending. There was this fear, this insecurity within me, that I would feel, well, like my writing sucked compared to hers. I'm discovering it doesn't and I need that. That is probably very ego based but I think as artists, hell, as humans, we long to feel that what we have to offer is valuable, beautiful, and meaningful. It's not praise that's needed so much as affirmation. It is that need to know that what is so important to me isn't complete shit. It's those bits and pieces of affirmation that keeps one doing what one loves to do. And that affirmation is important because when your soul is deeply connected to your art, whatever that medium might be, you want to sense that it is being seen and honored, not overlooked and crushed to pieces. I don't know that affirmation is essential as much as it is important...hmmmm...this is something I want to toss around some more because it's an intriguing thought--the importance and place of affirmation.
Another very unexpected gift my Thursday night group has given me is the growing ability to see the value in aging. As we write and then read our pieces aloud I have become more aware of how aging can not only add an edge of maturity to ones writing and acceptance of ones writing, but it also yields so many more rich experiences to draw from. More than once I have left the group with a new perspective on my life. Its helping me see that I actually have had a pretty fascinating life with some really incredible experiences. Of course you don't have to be older to have a wealth of fascinating and incredible life experiences. But being older certainly does give more time to have more fascinating and incredible life experiences. That has been important to me because often I look at my life and think it hasn't been interesting, that its boring and ordinary and, well, not enough. But when I see myself drawing from my own personal experiences in our various writing exercises I begin to feel okay about where my life is and what my life thus far has been.
I'm also learning that it's okay to have nights of really shitty writing. That's going to happen. Sometimes I feel empty or tired. Sometimes it just isn't flowing. Sometimes I know what I want to say but can't quite get it right. I seem to be working around it but can't quite get to it. And that's okay. Let it go and move on. There is more that needs to be written and it will come in many forms...sometimes that form being really terrible writing.
I guess it can all be summed up by saying every time I show up and write, no matter what comes out, and then share my words with someone else, I am being gifted not only with the growth that comes from practice but the self-acceptance that comes from seeing your truth, owning your voice, honoring and holding on to what worked and acknowledging and letting go of what didn't.
