The Writing Group

 Los Angeles, California

Cathy, my friend, trainer, and Chinese-medicine guru, belongs to a small writing group. They formed at the very beginning of the pandemic and carried out a weekly meeting throughout the pandemic via Zoom. When I invited Cathy to come to my house for a pool day, something we also did last summer, she suggested that she bring the group, and all of the food, with her. And that we could do some writing from 'prompts.' This sounded like a great idea and turned out to be even better than I expected.

Cathy brought Erica with her, as well as a spread of food, and a bottle of champagne. I provided orange juice for mimosas and the makings for Aperol spritz. And glasses. And that's all! We ate fresh vegetables, fruit, hummus, pita chips, smoked salmon, chips and salsa, and an eggplant dish with olives that Cathy had made, all at the little round teak table in my courtyard. Then we brought tablets to the lounge chairs by the pool and talked about what we wanted to write about. We came up with a question about what changes we wanted to see in our lives. We wrote for twenty minutes, then shared and talked about what each of us had written. The second prompt asked what we would need to do to facilitate this change. Again, we wrote and shared.

I have written this blog for over a decade and I have lost track of all of the subjects I have written about. But I know that I have written this before: I also keep a journal; have two completed novels; two abandoned novels, and two abandoned self-help books (one diet, and one etiquette). Abandoning projects makes me feel like a failure. Or did, until I read an interview with an author recently where she referred to an abundance of discarded or abandoned writing projects. So, I felt somewhat validated in that practice.

My pen pal recently wrote to me about a houseguest who made the bed before they left his home after a visit. What are they thinking? he asked. Was he going to keep it for someone else to sleep in without changing linens? I pulled out an abandoned project, a modern etiquette book I had started writing in 2019, and sent him an excerpt from the chapter entitled How to Be a Good Guest. I hadn't looked at it in awhile. It contained some handy tidbits such as not bringing flowers to a dinner party that need to be arranged. Your host is most likely busy in the kitchen and having to break away to arrange flowers isn't always welcomed. But the part that pertained to his complaint was: Don't dump damp towels on top of the linens you have taken off the bed and bring them to your host. She (and I am referring to myself here) may not have planned to do laundry at that time, and now will have to in order to stave off mildew. Of course a lot of these problems are easily solved when people don't make assumptions and use that little thing between their nose and chin to ask their host for some guidance. Everyone runs their home in their own way. When you stay with someone, you should understand that, if you want to be a good guest, you are required to get with their program as much as possible.

Am I inclined to finish the etiquette book? Not so much. But I do have a writing project in mind that I think could be rewarding. At the start of the pandemic, I took a pretty, empty book and began writing down the recipes that I cooked for myself. I have continued this to this day, and now have only a few pages left before the book is filled. Each recipe is dated and color-coded to the month (don't ask. Ok, ask. I assign colors to months, yes I do). I kept my journal through the same time, as well as the blog posts I wrote here. I am thinking of combining the three into a cohesive whole. It's not a lot of writing. More organizing and editing. But I think it is a viable project. The writing group is invited to come to my home again next month. Maybe I'll run this idea past them. I didn't feel like this in the past, but now appreciate that it is good to commune with other writers. Otherwise, writing can feel like the proverbial tree. Oops! Did you hear that fall? Hello? Anybody there..? Hmmm. See what I mean?