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>Finding My Chicago Writing Tribe

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Writing is a lonely craft.

Even with the support of the social media community, writing is lonely. Pouring my words out on the page and the screen day after day without physical human interaction is hard. The inner critic easily steps in to fill the silence, whispering and even sometimes shouting that I am boring, trite, ordinary, and just plain dull. “Walk away”, he suggests seductively, “stop wasting your time.” But what does he know? I can’t stop writing, just like I can’t stop cooking, reading, or dreaming. Writing feeds me, grounds me, and makes my pulse beat right.

I seek out my writing sisters wherever I live to help silence the critic’s annoying voice with their encouragement. I found them in New Jersey when I first started writing thanks to Lisa Garrigues and her Writing Motherhood class. She brought us together and gave us the tools to continue to find our voices on our own. We met every Tuesday to write and share our dreams. For close to two years, we offered each other the gift of our stories and trusted each other with our innermost secrets. I miss the quiet sanctity of those Tuesday morning sessions, and how much they quieted and fueled me.

Stacy, Lucy and I with Kelly Corrigan at a reading for the Middle Place

In Ohio, I searched long and hard for a new group of writing women to replace my New Jersey writing sisters. I met many fascinating people of different ages and different backgrounds along the way, all united with a common hunger to fill the blank page. But I didn’t feel as though I had found my Ohio writing tribe until I began meeting with Amy, Abby, and our growing group of talented bloggers and writers every third Thursday night at Borders that I truly felt comfortable letting my pen and my voice flow again. I left that sisterhood too soon, just as we were getting to know and really support each other, but we remain connected through Twitter and through blogs and I carry their words and stories with me.

I’ve been writing alone since the summer, focusing on settling down and getting my family settled before beginning the journey of finding my Chicago writing tribe. But this weekend I finally felt ready to try again, and I went to meet a group of local writers to do some writing exercises. It’s too soon to tell whether we’ll click, whether this is the group that will feed my writing, but I’m glad I went, glad I met these two women and heard their stories, glad that I wrote with them for a few hours.

Writing is a special type of need, an addiction really. Whenever I walk into a room and find people clutching tattered notebooks filled with wild scribbles, I feel at home.  The company of kindred spirits fuels me to silence the destructive voice of my inner critic for a little longer and inspires me to write, frees my pen to fill the page.


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