August 8, 2007

I attended my first Writer’s Group last night. It went really well. Everyone liked the story I submitted, which made me glad. Then they pointed out the flaws so that I could make the story even better. This is exactly what is supposed to happen and what I’m supposed to do in return. I felt like I gave some good feedback, nothing stellar mostly backing up or contradicting other opinions. I felt like a solid contributing member of the group, which is as it should be.

Everything went well, and I still came home and fell into an emotional little heap. Fortunately I have a wonderful husband who sat and listened to me decompress. Then he helped me see that everything went as it should have, but I was having an emotional reaction because this writer’s group experience is well outside my comfort zone. He’s right. I’m so much more comfortable staying in my own home and writing while pretending that no one else will ever see it. Howard can see that being part of thes writers group will make me grow. I can see it too. But growth is seldom comfortable. I think he is also right in predicting that as I continue to go to writer’s group, I will stop doing the “emotional heap” thing when I get home.

The good news is that today was a really good writing day. I broke through a couple of blockages that I’d had on two different projects. This completely destroys my worry that knowing I’d be submitting to writers group would cause me to freeze up. I suppose that could still happen at a later date, but I’m already granting myself permission to not submit every week. That removes some of the pressure. I would like to submit something this week, but now I have to figure out what to submit.