Welcome, writers! Kristen and I are excited to share that the South County Writers group is growing, and with new people interested, we thought it worthwhile to share additional information about the group.

First, any level of experience is welcome. Right now, we mostly have folks who love to write but don’t always have the time to do it. We have some people who write for a living, and others who are doing something else entirely in their day to day lives. We have have teachers, moms, technicians, students…part of the fun in the group is hearing how people from different backgrounds and levels of experience all respond to the same prompt. (You might be surprised to see how themes develop, even without planning: at our last meeting, three of us wrote about snow even though the prompt had nothing to do with winter and it was almost sixty degrees outside.)

Second, we welcome all kinds of responses to the prompts: fiction, nonfiction, memoir, stream of consciousness, poetry…if you manage to write song lyrics in response to a prompt, we’d be truly impressed. Whatever the prompt inspires in you, we’re interested. It doesn’t have to be neat, and it doesn’t have to be long. Sometimes, even one perfect line or phrase is enough to get you writing again.

The goal, of course, is to beat “writer’s block” in all of its forms. Writer’s block is formally defined as, “the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing.” (Less formally, some writers will say writer’s block is when their characters stop talking to them.)

What we found at our last meeting is that mostly, we all love to write-even if it’s been years since we last wrote anything creative. But we don’t always have the time, energy, or mental clarity to sit down, start writing, and simply get words on the page.

You may have noticed that our prompts may be short: a few words, or the start of a sentence or idea. The brevity is intentional, in part. If you can train yourself to write without too much direction, almost everything in your life becomes prompt-worthy. (Prompt: dog. Does the word make you think about your first dog? Your child’s first dog? Does it make you think about the dog sleeping at your feet right now, and the way you can hear his nose whistling while he sleeps? Does ‘dog’ make you think of loyalty? Fear? Allergies? Does it make you think about the English language, and how ‘d’ and ‘g’ are kind of weird sounds? You’re getting the idea…)

Happy writing, and we hope we’ll see you at the group.

Final Details:

Can’t make a meeting? Post a prompt response in the comments section, if you’d like your response to be attributed to you. Want to post anonymously? Email us your response at: southcountywriters@gmail.com

We’re currently borrowing our “suggestions of order” from other writing groups like ours: 

1. Newest person to the group chooses a prompt.
2. Timer is set for 20 minutes, and everybody writes. When time is up…
3. …the person who chose the prompt picks the first reader.
4. The first reader can read or pass, and picks the direction we read around the circle.
5. Those who want to read, read. Those who don’t, pass. After each reading, listeners may choose to share their thoughts: what worked? Was there a particular image or phrase that was powerful or memorable?
6. After everyone has read or passed, the second newest person picks the next prompt and we set the timer again.