Last monthly meeting of the
Atlanta Writers' Club (AWC) featured one speaker (published) and then a panel
of four published members. The
subject is always the same: how do we (the audience) go from being like us to
being like them (the published authors). The room packed audience was tuned to a high pitch of
expectation, and the speakers and panelists were eager to share their
breathless stories of labor, frustration and success. The electric atmosphere in the room, for the first time, turned me off.
I arrived as a member only 10
months ago, sensing that I had maybe gone to heaven. This same charged atmosphere of both speakers and listeners
elevated my spirit gloriously. These
hidden souls, my cloned aspirations, where had they been? I concluded a subsequent poem, "All
these years, all of these years, my words wasted on frigid ears." Now I was home.
I joined critique groups, went
to seminars and workshops and monthly meetings. Now, how lies it that ‘my’ joy lies slain? It seems as if we have a disease, and we seek the cure by
congregating, together and with speakers who offer the cure, but the cure is
the disease, and the speakers are carriers, and both they and we are
contagious.
We gather, wanting something
so bad. It's driving us crazy. It
is irresistible, irrepressible, incurable. I was terrified by these thoughts and feelings, but I am
infected and I doubt that I will be able to stay away from the writers club sanitarium.
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