March 27, 2011

Planet Scribe

Just finished an hour long Skype session with my writing group, Planet Scribe. What I love about this group:

*  we live all around the world: Ohio, Washington, Hawaii and Hong Kong
*  everyone shares their thoughts, opinions, ideas - honestly and with great humor
*  I am not intimidated by others' intelligence or my own lack of knowledge
*  I feel productive after the call
*  I could drink wine in the morning with them or mimosas, if I wanted to, and not feel or be judged

We talked about Point of View writing, which was informative. But like most good therapy sessions, the juicy stuff came out in the last 10 minutes of the conversation. I spoke about my reticence of writing too honestly on my other blog and that reticence inspiring me to start The Clothesline. R said it was the honesty of my writing that made reading the blog interesting, which made me feel better (and it is all about making myself feel better).

I can see that writing about day to day stuff is interesting but there is a fine line between interesting for the reader and the self-indulgent contemplation for the author. This blog is that fine line, I think. I like this phrase that came from the conversation: "Life is like that, you know? Sweet and bitter...its the tension of life."

I also question the idea of writing honestly under a pseudonym. How honest is that?! As one of  my online students said, "I need to make changes in babysteps." Writing honestly under "Veronica" while writing guarded under my real name. Actually, that sounds about right as my big life lesson is about how I routinely worry about having others' approval. That's dwindled somewhat. And as R, ever-wise and all-knowing, pointed out - we are different people to different people. I don't tell everyone everything all the time - kinda. I might do that. I think I'm looking for connections between things - things in my life, people in my life. Putting the puzzle together as I learn more about myself and what I'm capable of accomplishing or ignoring.

Good work, Planet Scribe. 

1 comment:

  1. What I know about 'emotional honesty' in writing:
    1. If I don't feel it, then the reader isn't going to feel it either.
    2. Yeah, sometimes it's scary in the sense that I'm sharing a real emotion with strangers, a private emotion that I normally wouldn't share, but for me it's what I love about my writing.
    Some of the demons get to be exorcise.

    I tell R that 'what you see is what you get', that I try to live a simple life, I don't get into others dramas, I'm private about my own. I make myself complicated when I want to be. R says I'm sweetheart of a man, calm and patient but some wouldn't know from what I write about.
    Writing is (in my opinion) about ethics, morality and the 7 deadly sins being hashed out in words on paper. That is why I love walking down this path and what makes it better is that there are some amazing people on the same path too and they're in my writing group. That's cool!
    If I never get published I'm cool with that too. I write for me right now. Stay happy. ric

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