It’s been four years since I visited this, my first writing home after leaving my last real job. In that time I’ve written one novel and started a second, and had the fantastic good fortune of finding an agent (though not a publisher).  I’ve worked with the marvelous teacher of Dangerous Writing, Tom Spanbauer, in Portland, OR.  And continue to work on discovering my own writing voice, the one that is not hidden behind the style required of wire services or politicians or bureaucracies. It’s been challenging, and a lot of fun.

Writing a novel is isolating and frustrating and and often feels like a hopeless endeavor. I was thrilled and mostly amazed to get to the end of mine, before learning how long and tortuous is the road between “finished” and “really finished.”   To get there, I needed not only the self-discipline of writing hundreds of bad pages on my own, but the support of other writers, sometimes just other people writing in the same room, to keep on keeping on.

My friend and former partner at UPI, Jan Haag, told me about Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) and invited me to join a workshop she was leading, using the method developed by the poet and teacher Pat Schneider, author of  Writing Alone and With Others (Oxford Press).  Given my background as a journalist the method sounded, at first, both too intimidating and not rigorous enough.  Sometimes it’s within such contradictions that wisdom and joy are found.

The belief behind AWA is that everyone is a writer. We all have stories and tell them all the time, in conversations, in our heads, and sometimes on paper. A writer is someone who writes, no matter her experience, education, age or identity outside of writing.   In the method, a small group of writers gather and the workshop leader gives a writing prompt. This can be a line of poetry, an object, a photograph, really anything that might stir memory or imagination.  The group then quietly writes, from memory or imagination, whatever comes to mind. Doesn’t need to be about the prompt, but the prompt may inspire something.  The writing continues for a specific, usually short amount of time. Fifteen minutes, ten, twenty, depending on the length of the session and how many “writes” are desired during that time.  When the writing time ends, pens are put down or keyboards silent, and, one by one, the writers read what they have written.

Now, the idea of reading aloud something you’ve just written is the intimidating part, but only at first. Quickly the writers learn that they are all in this together, that everyone has faced the blank page not knowing what on earth their minds and hearts may find to put there. They are further encouraged by the AWA rules regarding feedback:  only three responses are allowed: What I liked, what was strong, what stays with me. In every piece of writing there will be some nugget that is strong, that stays with the listener. In hearing what that is, in their writing and others’, the writers learn a lot about the craft of writing. More important, they begin to discover and to strengthen their own voices as writers.

I found the process to be magical. What comes from people’s minds and hearts from a simple prompt is truly amazing. What comes from my own heart and mind has also been surprising and instructive.  The process is not therapy, but it can indeed be therapeutic. It also gives writers a starting point — new writing from which longer pieces, deeper characters, different voices, might emerge with later work.

AWA keeps writers feeling safe in their writing by demanding confidentiality of the writers. Nothing about the writing leaves the room, even in discussion with other writers. All writing is presumed fiction. There is no discussion about the subject of the writing, only the writing itself and only in context of those three responses: what I liked, what was strong, what stays with me.

I found the AWA method to be so exciting I decided to be trained to lead workshops and became certified to do so at a training in Chicago in September. I look forward to writing with others in this way as I continue growing in my own practice of writing, a practice that for me grows more satisfying every year.