Workshop Strengthened My Circle of Friends
It’s mid-April when we decide to submit our pieces for our Zoom workshop. There are four of us: Maddie, Lauren, Liz, and me. Liz starts the Gmail chain of pieces with a subject line paying homage to cocktails they’ve had in Brooklyn. I’m the newest addition to the group and the most nervous. Maddie asked me to join more than once on our Facetime call that I rescheduled last month. “We could use another person,” she says while reaching for her phone. She types my name and adds me to their group text when I agree. “I need a deadline.” What I did not say was how I longed to reconnect with my circle of friends.
Since leaving our graduate school and entering lockdown a little over a year ago, I’ve paused my writing. My focus fades whenever I read. My thoughts blank when I try to pen them down. If 2019 was my rising action, I tripped over 2020 like the rest of the world and slumped into a fall that never seemed to hit the bottom and expose anything. Writing requires a clear presence and intellect, and not a mental fog I carried for most of that year. My lack of work also led me to withdraw from my writing friends. When I wanted to talk about my writing woes, I couldn’t find the right words. The workshop invitation offered to strengthen more than just sentences.
Workshops require a kind of seeing. As a reader, you submerge and resubmerge yourself into another writer’s work to note the parts that work and parts that remain unclear. As a writer, you watch the conversation between readers unfold so that you can note certain opinions before deciding the notes you want and the notes you would rather hide at the bottom of your desk drawer. All distractions are removed as good participants must be present to engage with the work. Great participants also engage with each other. While I had workshop classes in undergrad, my first experience with this kind of bond was in my first graduate course. Orli sat beside me at the roundtable, but we spoke on our walk home after the second week. “Speak up more,” she said. “You’re really good.” We sat together at our second workshop of the semester, surrounded by a group of other writers including Maddie. She told me about her new place in Midtown East, and I told her I used to live a block over.
Workshop classes laid the groundwork for a solid group of writers, all of whom we wanted to see after the exchange of pieces and feedback. Orli told me about her recent dates, while Maddie threw get-togethers on weekends. We left class and usually headed towards the campus café, where we could break down what happened in the workshop, moan about our own work, then plan for the weekend. A group of us attend Maddie and Lauren’s Prose and Rosé reading on Saturday and Barney Greengrass’ breakfast on Sunday. We celebrated birthdays and holidays. Even after graduation and moving away, we send occasional comments through Instagram or planned phone calls on weekends. We formed a writers tribe who strengthened not only our works-in-progress, but each other.
Flash forward to two years later, and my friends now pixilate into Brady Bunch squares across my laptop. I confess that I’m rusty and something like rust thickens inside my throat. Maddie explains their process, and we ease into conversations over the submissions and about each other. We discuss writing woes and remember our weekends where we met in Maddie’s apartment for an assignment and instead drank wine and planned a trip to Napa. Lauren and Liz haven’t read my writing, but their comments are rich and thoughtful. My throat warms, and I realize how much I missed them. My friends reach from different parts of my life, but my circle of friends who write understand a part of my story that rests underneath the surface.
Since our first meeting in April, my friends and I schedule time to meet monthly with submitted pieces. When I lost my grandfather, they checked in through texts. When another friend went on a date, we cheered through the screen with our drinks and listened to the details because the work could wait. We talked about my engagement and Maddie’s job, Lauren’s teaching stories and Liz’s finds on Facebook marketplace. My friends understand the sessions I don’t submit when work life feels overwhelming, and I trust them to read the messiest of my drafts to see what’s working or where I should start over.
Writing is a lonely profession. You and the page are the two parts of the whole experience in creating stories and uncovering truths. As an introvert, I revel in the sacredness of my quiet practice. I wake up and retreat to the thoughts I’m trying to make sense of before the rest of the world wakes up with me and we have to go about our daily to-do lists. Here I can throw out the ideas or revisit work from the day before and refine the work without pressure. Yet there is a point in which loneliness grows from comforting to suffocating. You reach a crossroads in the work, not knowing which path to go or whether to move further.
My friends practice care and sensitivity for each other’s work. We are honest and supportive, and we encourage each other because we’re all our own work-in-progress. Whether it was our writing or personal lives that hit walls or burst with gratitude, my writing circle pays attention. We turn back to one another and discover support to keep going.
About Greer Veon
Greer Veon is a writer based in Conway, Arkansas. Between writing and reading books, she works as an area coordinator for the Office of Residence Life at Hendrix College. In 2019, she earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has been featured in ELLE and The New Territory Magazine. Find her at greerveon.com, or on Twitter at @greerveon
