When my husband, my lover, friend and partner for nearly 67 years died during the COVID epidemic, I was too shaken to pay much attention to what was happening in my life. By the time I was healed enough to recognize my emotions, I realized that I was lonely and that my days were empty. I had friends enough, but they were all connected to “what used to be,” and that wasn’t what I needed.
Because of my grief, I had forgotten that creativity is not only a powerful healer, but also necessary for a full life. We’re repeatedly warned of the need to maintain our physical flexibility, but another element of flexibility reveals itself as we age — the flexibility that enables us to leave behind “what used to be,” and open ourselves fully to “what actually is.” I needed again to immerse myself in a creative activity that would reflect my new reality.
A few months later, an opportunity presented itself when my longtime friend Kathy read a haiku that she had just written, and revealed, regretfully, that her writing group had recently disbanded. She loved to write, but without any structure, she was finding it much more difficult than before.
Light bulb!
Since I also love to write, since I don’t drive anymore, and since I was lonely, I offered to host a writing group meeting at my home once a month, inviting my friend and the other members of her former circle as well as a couple of mutual friends who are also wannabe writers. She enthusiastically agreed, and we held our first meeting on the third Wednesday of that month.
I issued prompts, we wrote, we read our musings, we shared. But the most important outcome of that day was landing on a name with which we all identified. Since we are all “elderly” — we range in age from early 70s to 90 — we decided that we would call ourselves The NON-Writers Group. Translated: The Now or Never Writers Group — because, if not now, when?
At the first meeting, we all felt a bit tentative, even vulnerable. If we were to be true to our purpose, we needed to “open up,” to offer our work to others and to really listen to their words so that we would all feel heard. More daunting still was the realization that our work might be misunderstood by the others, or even rejected. After all, we didn’t really know each other that well. We were brought together by a love of writing, but much could go wrong.
During that first meeting, we talked about what we hoped to achieve, and how we could get there. We agreed that we could comment on others’ work unless the writer specifically requested that we not. We agreed to support and offer suggestions to anyone feeling stuck, and we agreed that our feedback would be honest, but gently delivered. We also vowed to be flexible, to change our structure if necessary, and to give every participant the right to refuse the prompt if she felt so inclined. With that, we formed The NON-Writers.
An unsent letter and a few tears
It is now more than a year-and-a-half since our first gathering. An organic rhythm has developed that we find works well for us. We begin each meeting with a check-in, and share a short account of what is going on in our lives so we can enter into each other’s stories with grace and compassion. Then we open our “special notebooks,” preparing to write.
What I didn’t expect from this gathering was the richness of the experience. Like many other writing groups, we use prompts — but only to suggest, incite or inspire a reaction from our members. Some ideas are successful, some not so much, but it is always surprising which suggestions explode into something much more.
We recently had a session that revolved around letters sent by or to us in the past. It was truly amazing. I had once, much earlier, written a letter (unmailed) as a therapeutic exercise to three men who had discouraged me from pursuing a career in art. Through the group, I reused this as a prompt for composing another rather testy follow-up letter 70 years later, thanking them but informing them that, by the actions in my life, they had been proven wrong. For me it proved incredibly healing, even if I did shed a few tears as I wrote.
Sometimes the response is direct, answering the “prompt” in a literal fashion, but more often it is a spin-off that explores the situation and produces deliciously unexpected material. In exploring our reactions, we are also exploring our deepest selves. Dangerously heady material? Yes! Heart-wrenching memories? Yes! Funny stories, silly stories and playful indulgence? Yes! When we have finished, we read our writings out loud, encouraging more comments on our work. What was most liked, or most powerful? What experiences were common to others? What needs clarification? What could be stronger?
‘A defiant thrust of green’
As well as what we write during the meeting, we also read aloud material we’ve been working on outside the group — always short pieces but worth our attention. Sometimes we bring a poem or a piece by another author that moves us or is significant in some way. Sometimes a chapbook, or a recommendation for a novel that we have found to be exceptional. There are few “rules,” just enough structure to prevent the meeting from splintering into chaos.
The group continues to experiment with what works (and what doesn’t) in our writings.
Poetry brings us endless fascination. We often use the haiku as a prompt because it is so demanding, yet so satisfying when we get it “right.” I remember vividly the day that I wrote:
“What joy in seeing/A defiant thrust of green/Between the flagstones.”
I felt like I was walking on air! We have challenged ourselves with pantoums and with villanelles, with limericks and with free verse. We have also written (inspired by Muscogee writer Joy Harjo) personal essays about kitchen tables; we have explored our birth signs; we have ranted, raved and wrangled with the process of aging.
After we have shared our writings and our thoughts, we snack: home made cookies, fruit, cherry tomatoes from a backyard garden, cheese, crackers, dips, stuffed grape leaves — whatever the members wish to bring. An occasional glass of wine, ginger beer or a cocktail made from Irish whiskey that one of us brought from Ireland. And of course, laughter — lots and lots of laughter.
And so, once a month we meet. We write and we discuss, but we also SHARE. We share not only our work, we also share our lives. We laugh, we cry, we toast, we feast, but most of all we write, and we enlarge our understanding of life and develop our ability to adapt to “what actually is.” For a while, loneliness is kept from the doors and flexibility reigns. Connecting with each other and expanding our mutual experiences, we immerse ourselves in our now-or-never lives, writing now instead of never.
Mary Schinhofen is a writer who lives in Bloomfield and can be reached at firstperson@publicsource.org.
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