I'm nearly finished with my short story Rain in which a wealthy gay man from New York returns to the backwoods Tennessee hospital to be with his dying middle school instructor. The lead character is possibly the most interest for me since my writing resurgence last year. His mannerisms and outlook kept me smiling all through the writing. I can't wait to have the first section critiqued.

I have been a little conflicted about setting down The Letter to William Waiklin, but this story had to be written while the iron was hot.

www.sawritersguild.com

I became a member of the San Antonio Writers Guild early in 2007. Now I'm not normally a joiner, but having read extensively about what to and what not to do to become a successful writer, I joined. I felt out-of-place and I didn't enjoy it but I believed everything I had read couldn't be wrong, right? So I stuck it out and returned until, around the beginning of summer, I had relaxed out of my natural social shell enough for it to feel, to a certain extent, normal.

The meetings run like this: you have your normal speech about the state of the Guild including good news / bad news, introduction of new members, news about contests or scams. That first drubbing of boredom ends with the obligatory pleas for members to become more active, head up committees, bring in guests, write more, and so on.

Then, if the person who was tricked into heading up the committee in charge of rounding up a guest speaker has done the work, a guest speaks about writing, publishing or their book that just came out. With guest speakers, it's hit or miss. Oh, how much I'd love to give specific examples of guest speakers who have not only failed to hold my interest, but who have tempted me to consider putting violence upon them. But when a guest speaker is good, it's so worth having attended. Take last night's guest (February '08 monthly meeting) Marcus Henderson Wilder, a 70-year-old man who warned us that he had never been asked to speak before a crowd before so to please stop him at 20 minutes. Nearly 45 minutes passed and no one in the crowd lifted a finger, nor did it likely cross anyone's mind to do so. Though he did speak in a side-tracked way, sometimes not returning to a point, everything he had to say captivated the room. (Check out his book, Naïve & Abroad: Pakistan : Travel in a Land of Mullahs at iUniverse.) Folks who have lived interestingly and have taken the time to document in writing their adventure are an inspiration.

Finally, the membership breaks into groups by genre. I meet with the other fiction writers while others meet with non-fiction or children's literature and whatever other genres are represented. In those smaller groups, whomever has up to 15 pages of work to share with the group hands out copies, someone reads and each member takes his turn offering feedback. The goal is the help one another become better writers. I've heard of some critique groups whose membership is infected with competitiveness and rivalry, but I haven't run into those darker qualities since joining.

I joked last night that coming to the Guild meetings--and the critique group that meets outside of the monthly meeting, but I'll write about that another time--is the opposite of a 12-step program to quit addiction. For me, the idea is to keep coming so that I might develop a positive addiction. And it's helped. I continue to write every day...something...just keep writing no matter what has happened.