I've mentioned my writers' group before and how much I enjoy it. We met on Thursday evening after quite a long time and now there is currently only 4 us, and 3 on Thursday. 2 of our members left the country and another is away. But we do have a new recruit who writes the most amazing travelogues. I brought along a rough draft of the article I've been struggling with and came away with some very useful feedback. The others felt my writing was too distant and anaemic – full of facts but no opinion. I've had this problem before with my non-fiction.
We discussed how felt our experiences of a academia has influenced the way we write. We've all been grad students where a certain type of written expression was drummed into us. In my case I did a social sciences post grad degree and found I was constantly being told that my style was too journalistic and not objective and factual enough. I have to say that all in all the most important thing I learned was that I loathe social sciences! So now some of us feel we need to unlearn that dry academic style which is good for little else then communicating to other academics.
Thank goodness for this group! I often thought groups were kind of lame, either full of pretentious personalities or people with great enthusiasm but little talent. But if you find warm intelligent people who have a gift for writing and will also be honest, it's such a worthwhile experience and an education. Our group has gone through many metamorphoses, yet we're still going and nurturing each other and pushing each to be great writers. Very cool.
