Day 5: No talking with your feedback

Diane, writerly

This is going to be a cranky post.

I arrived about 3 minutes late to The Berkeley Writers Circle meetup at Au Coquelet Cafe, and a poem was in full swing. I pulled up a chair to the crowded row of tables, probably 20 people in all, and sat back to listen. But I could hardly hear. Luckily, there was a printout in front of me as well.

Fast bits of feedback, and we've moved on to the next reading, a metaphorical dreamy thing about a river. Then a cute love story told through back-and-forth postcards. Then a chapter in a novel about writing a novel.

I am not exactly meeting anyone at this moment. I gather that the woman next to me is named Lisa, as we share a printed copy of a story and try to write comments on the same piece of paper simultaneously as the author reads the words out loud. I cannot write comments, cannot even correct spelling and punctuation, at the pace a person reads aloud. I am lost. Lisa is better at it. Her handwriting is beautiful and her vocal comments sharp.

The meeting then transitions into a discussion of how these meetings should run. It's a meta kind of day, I guess. This is apparently a once-yearly event; I picked the fated week. I chime in despite my lack of tenure. Nobody has a clue who I am.

Meeting finishes on schedule around 9:30. The folks sitting near me all disperse, but a few hang around to talk.

It's at this point I meet Diane. She, like myself, is a wide-eyed newbie in the group. She intends to use the regular meetings to inspire her to actually write the fiction (science fiction) stories she has rattling around in her head. She is kind, self-deprecating, friendly, enthusiastic. She's 3 months off chemo and feels "even better than before. There's nothing like being sick for nine months to make you feel really great."

We talk a bit, and I like her. But I'm tired. I don't have it in me. She suggests we get a coffee, but it's 10 pm and all I want is to go home. Five days in and I'm wearing thin. Oh dear.

She tells me she read somewhere about another person doing a 30-days-of-meeting-people blog. "I'm the queen of search, I'll find it for you." Link will appear when she does, I'm curious.

This group could, in theory, be a great, ongoing, sustainable way to meet people. They get together every week and they all share something that interests me. But I'm already in a writing group, one that gets deeper on each piece, one that I've invested in. Still, I like giving and hearing comments, not just on my own work, and it's great meeting other people who write. Perhaps I'll dabble, come now and then. I hope Diane makes it more often than that: I hear she's got some good stories.