Guest blogger Davin Malasarn writes about how relationships change when we mature as writers.
Three days before the first meeting of the WordKnot Writer’s Group—a group I put together in the summer of 2001—I got a call from one of the new members suggesting that no one be allowed to bring cookies.
Marie, a retired saleswoman, wanted to ensure that we focus on work rather than on socializing.
We met one Saturday morning, gathering around the dining table in my little blue condominium with nothing but water, and each of us read ten pages of work without much extra chitchat. The Spartan style seemed to be fine for everyone involved, and I knew right away that I was among the right company.
Ten years later, the WordKnot writers still gather every other week, each of us taking turns to host, but we have slackened our rules on discipline. With the holidays quickly approaching, for example, I’m pretty sure we’ll have a massive cookie exchange at our next meeting.
And permission to bring treats isn’t the only thing that changed. We’ve all grown as writers, and we’ve all found different niches. Norm—the oldest at 87—recently published his third book about World War II. Frances has become funnier and funnier in her stories. Maggie writes about her trips around the world in the sixties and seventies. And Marie often categorizes her work as women’s fiction.
On one hand, I’m happy that each of us has made progress in finding ourselves and developing our skills. On the other hand our meetings have become more difficult as each of us realizes we have less to say to each other in terms of providing helpful critique.
Cookies aside, we’ve wondered lately if there is still a point to keeping the group going.
The stagnation is unexpected. When I completed my first short story in college I thought I had a clear vision of what the writer’s path needed to look like. I assumed a forward trajectory, where I’d be constantly improving until I became senile or died, preferably the latter.
The ultimate destination of my journey was somewhere “up there,” right next to people like Leo Tolstoy and Yasunari Kawabata. The way might be hard, but it was still only one way.
Since then, my career as a writer has taken many more turns than I would have ever predicted. I’ve met writers and grown apart from them. I’ve tried other groups and left them. And the fickleness of relationships with people isn’t the only thing I’ve had to deal with. I’ve fallen in and out of love with several stories, so that some ideas barely make it off the ground while others are mercifully put down after years of being on a respirator.
When my group and I discussed what to do about ourselves, we decided to try a new structure that includes exchanging longer excerpts and giving more detailed critiques prior to our meetings. If we didn’t want the group to end, we needed to at least change it.
I think embracing change is really the key. After all, evolution isn’t a path toward some idealized state of being. It is a process of constant and random change that interacts with the equally constant and random changes of the world. Sometimes there will be a match: survival. Sometimes there won’t be: death and the reorganization of the atoms in the universe.
I’ve been less stressed about my group and my writing since I accepted this idea of constant change. I’m also less worried about catching up to Tolstoy or Kawabata—I don’t need to plant my flag in the same plot of dirt that they did.
For me, now, a piece of work fully realized becomes its own being. I don’t think there’s much point in comparing it to anything else. As for my expectations of people, I accept that connections will come and go. Paths will cross momentarily, and we should cherish them before we continue on our way to discover our own private lands.
Davin Malasarn lives and writes in Los Angeles, CA. In 2008, he was selected as a PEN Center USA Emerging Voices Fellow, and his short stories have been published in The Los Angeles Review, Rosebud, Night Train, and SmokeLong Quarterly. He co-authors The Literary Lab with Scott G.F. Bailey and Michelle Davidson Argyle. His first collection is The Wild Grass and Other Stories.