The Rialto Community Storyboard

I love how though the selfie was taken with my phone, I still don't know where to look for the picture. So very technologically savvy of me.

We meet for an hour and a half twice a month. We are writers of songs, children's stories, poems, essays, novels, short stories, blog posts and probably other things I don't know about. Some write only when we are together; some write all the time. For all of us, I think, the group is a solid place, where we know one anothers' work, can report back, check in.

Our words go out into the world in small ways. There is the poem that is going to be printed on a t-shirt. The lyrics put to music. The story going to an agent. The blog post beginning a series. But they are going out, which requires a certain amount of courage, I think.

What do we do? We gather, and then, maybe since we're mostly introverts or maybe because I'm mostly in charge and always a little awkward at small talk, we get right to work. We pull out words we've written since we last met and listen to words about crayons and conversations and books and temperaments and keys.

Last night, I read this from Scott Russell Sanders' Writing From the Center, "Writers have always sought out one another's company. What the workshop ideally provides is a community of people who read widely and well, who savor words, who enjoy using their minds, who take seriously what young writers wish to take seriously. Such a community is all the more vital in a society where books in general and literature in particular have been shoved to the margin, where language has been debased, where the making of art seems foolish beside the making of money."

Yesterday morning, at home, I was all set and ready to write about a new thing. I put in my working title and then just stared at the page. It wasn't writer's block exactly. I just didn't feel up to the task. So, last night, pen in hand, gathered with my writing friends, I did what I could not do alone in the morning.

We always write for fifteen minutes. This isn't a time for keyboards; we write in notebooks or scrap paper. Some of us will type up the words at home and expand and complete. Others let the words stand as they are.

After we write, we read aloud, if we want. Sometimes we stumble over our messy writing or out of sync words. Sometimes we say nothing; it was enough just to write. Sometimes the language of a poem or story is strong and clear, and I'm amazed that people can write something so beautiful, just like that.

We respond to what we hear.

And then we pack up. It's pretty simple stuff, but so necessary, I think, to this sometimes lonely endeavor of finding words.