There is this man in my writers’ group. He clutches a blue ballpoint pen while the rest of us clatter away on our laptops like a bunch of twenty-first century hipsters.
The rest of the group downs lattes or herbal tea poured from little glass pots. It’s a rainbow coalition of steaming magenta roots, deep green and purple leafy salads, and yellow napkins full of dried nuts. But he sits there with his blue ballpoint pen, his giant slice of pound cake, coffee – black, and a spiral notebook full of wrinkled pages. At first glance, he is the anomaly among us.
It’s a scenario born of the Internet. Visit the web site, enter interests, find out when the group meets and commence to: drinking, eating, reading, writing, watching, singing, playing, cooking or wherever the evening might lead. For some it is a way to network or socialize, for others it’s sort of like following a discipline. Making commitments amid the city’s cry for spontaneity is a challenge in itself.
I came to the group for two reasons: To meet people and to find direction. Three months in and neither goal has exactly panned out as I’d hoped. We start with the introductions – say your name and what you are working on. And then, as dictated by the name of this group, everyone has to “Shut Up & Write”.
For the next hour, it is just the din of milk being steamed, coffee rotating through the giant steel cylinder in the corner of the room – and of course the computer keys. Some type fervently, pounding the keys as if perhaps the amount of pressure exerted will somehow equate to a loftier level of prose upon their screens. Others barely tap these tiny pieces of plastic, too reticent to make a mark on the monitor, in the room.
Most of the group members are working on science fiction novels. I’m not exactly sure if there must exist some large, untapped fan base of otherworldly tragedies – or if maybe that is where money is to be made these days. One girl is writing a first-person essay about her brother, who – as she pauses for dramatic effect – is in prison.
The man with the pen never divulges his plotline. He only says that he is working on a novel. And every week he sits slightly at a distance from the rest of the group. He pushes is gold-rimmed glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose, drinks from the coffee cup on the table in large, unrestrained gulps, and scribbles at a steady pace in his spiral notebook.
Maybe he is different from us. Maybe we are all exactly the same. Just trying to produce something.
Jill Tydor lives and works in the Bay Area.
