Many of you dont know this, but about five years ago I was on the verge of giving up writing. Id just come through a harrowing change in my life, and was wondering whether writing was doing me any good. I worked, at the time, for people that didnt value my writing. Id just ended a marriage in which my writing had made my spouse feel bad. I spent months wondering whether some other line of work was better for me. In 2009 I joined a writers group in Studio City. That writers group was and is unlike any other Ive known. Consummately professional, open to anyone who had the discipline to plant ass in desk chair and write, honest enough to offer unvarnished reaction to the truly dysfunctional pieces of writing that were brought in but humane enough to make the devastating notes constructive. It felt like home. Within the first few weeks of attending the Studio City Writers Group had decided that I could actually make writing work. To some degree I am a successful writer today, in that its my sole source of income, and in that people tell me they value what I write. My friend and Studio City Writers Group colleague James Mathers, who died Friday, played a huge role in my coming to terms with the fact that I am doomed to write. And I never told him. James co-founded the group long before I showed up. He was instrumental in making it as humane a working group as it was. When Id bring in pieces of writing his responses -- his notes, in the jargon of the industry -- were unfailingly correct, and sometimes might have been dispiriting had they been delivered by someone not quite as generous... but coming from James, they felt like kindly gifts. He didnt singlehandedly set my work back on course. The group he started did that. His influence pervaded the group, and in the two years before I split for the desert I dont recall a single unkind or uncharitable note offered on someones writing while I was there. Which means I can still tell Dallas Dorsett Mathers, and Craig Sabin, and Angelle Haney Gullett, and Robin Greenspan and Lacie Harmon, and Victor Bornia, and some others not on Facebook that were it not for them my life would be very different now. But remember to tell this kind of thing to people while you can. Because every so often you will fire up Facebook and find that its too late to say something you really meant to say to someone who meant something to you.
Posted on: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 06:00:16 +0000
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