writing group

Last Sunday there was a raging snowstorm outside and inside the Waves Coffee boardroom on Columbia Street, we were jammed in elbow-to-elbow for The Other 11 Months Write-in.

Today it was sunny and a balmy 10ºC (as it should be in mid-February) and only six showed up and two left early. On the one hand, fewer people is a bit of a bummer. On the other hand, I had plenty of room to stretch out in all directions. And did!

It was also a very quiet group, with church-like silence for nearly the entire three hours, save for a burst of chatter at the start and the tapping of keys throughout. At the end, several agreed it had been quite productive for them, so yay for silence.

I again continued to work through old, unfinished material, focusing today on  Weirdsmith, The Mean Mind and Road Closed. Most of the work was done on Road Closed, as I fully converted it over to Ulysses, breaking each scene out into a separate sheet.

At this point, I’m pretty much done prepping my unfinished projects and have one of two choices for the next write-in:

1. Pick a project and resume working on it (that is, start producing new material–you know, actual writing)
2. Start something entirely new.
3. Bonus: Do neither of the above and just tinker for three hours again.

#3 is going to be tempting but I really need to commit to moving forward on something. Maybe I can conduct a self-poll. Or write a story about indecision. Or both. So many decisions.

Turnout for this week’s writing group was surprisingly high given the snowy conditions (the latest dump started midway through the writing session). As we gathered elbow to elbow around the conference table we settled into a mostly quiet session, punctuated by a few bursts of chatter over pitches for books and random advice.

One person had an iPad mini hooked up to a full-size PC keyboard. That was a little weird. The person to my left had a MacBook. I could tell just by closing my eyes and hearing how the keyboard clicked when she was typing.

For the third week in a row I bounced between projects, spending the bulk of my time converting The Mean Mind from Scrivener to Ulysses format and reading along as I went. To my surprise, it held up fairly well.

Soon I need to commit to finishing an existing project or starting a new one. When I think about trying to choose one thing to focus on I actually feel a certain level of anxiety, almost the beginning of a stress headache. Probably not a good thing.

But I will decide. Soon™.