— by Sheri Graner Ray (light edits by Shlomi — no M.M.s detected. 🙂 ).
In 2008, my good friends Thomas R., Philip B., and I had been kicking around the idea of starting a writing group [in Austin, Texas]. While my experience with writers’ groups had been less than stellar, I thought that if we kept it small and just us friends, we could make it a positive and helpful group.
We landed on the name Whitegold Wielders as we found that book series caused strong emotional reactions in all of us – some of us loved the books, and others hated them. Either way, we felt that stimulating emotion was a good goal for all of us.
The very first rule we set in place was that no one had to bring anything to be critiqued. You were welcome to come and participate in the critiques, but you didn’t have to bring anything to read.
The second was if you did bring something to read, you were to tell the group what kind of feedback you were looking for; everything from copy editing to story feedback, or even just “GOOD JOB!” was acceptable.
The third was that any kind of writing was acceptable – poetry, fiction, fan-fic, non-fiction, cookbooks, erotica, anything. If you wrote it and wanted feedback, we were OK with it.
Next was how the group would work. We decided the author would read a selection of their work aloud to the group. Then we would go around the room, and each person would give their feedback.
During the feedback part, the author could NOT ask questions while the person was talking. They were to simply listen while people spoke. They were allowed to ask their questions after everyone had spoken.
It only took us a couple of meetings before we discovered that some of us did better if we could read the copy silently before hearing the author read, so we agreed that authors would bring copies of their selection for everyone.
[Ah, the days of printers and printouts… Ed.]
We agreed we wanted to meet in public places, preferably where food and alcohol were served. We knew we would need a place that had at least a little bit of privacy and wouldn’t mind folks sitting at a table longer than just the meal.
Our first meeting was at Schell Games, where I was working. That was short-lived as we quickly found out the building’s AC shut off in the evening, which made it too hot to stay there.
Then we moved to La Madelline, as that’s where I wrote the majority of my first book, and I knew they wouldn’t mind how long we sat there. However, we quickly found out that reading our stuff aloud there drew odd looks, and scheduling their private room wasn’t easy, nor could we keep getting it on any kind of consistent basis (without paying for it).
We next tried Jim’s, but found that the tables that were big enough for us were directly under the stereo speakers. Reading our stuff aloud with musical accompaniment just got too funny!
Next, we tried the IHOP, because we knew they had a back “party room” that we might be able to use. Our first time there seemed like it was going to work until the staff decided to come in and use the tables at the other end of the room to dump out, sort, and wrap silverware!
Finally, we decided to just bite the bullet and meet at our houses. Philip offered his house, and he also provided wonderful fruity rum drinks! When he and Yvonne moved out to Taylor, we started using my house. About that time, Paige joined, and, shortly thereafter, Shlomi joined. Shlomi was going to dinner at a noodle place before each meeting and invited us to join him there. That’s when the ritual of a meal before the meet-up began.
Throughout the next few years, folks moved in and out of the group, but the core solidified around Philip, Thomas, Mike, Shlomi, Paige, and me. As the group grew, we found we had to add additional rules, including a word count limit on what each author could bring and a time limit on giving feedback. This allowed us to finish our meetings in time to get home before another day of work.
Then the pandemic arrived and made everything difficult and different. We could no longer meet up for noodles ahead of time, nor even meet in person. So we made the move into the virtual world. This kept our group alive and gave us the added benefit of allowing interested folks outside of Austin to join.
However, by that time, both Thomas and I had found employment that took most of our creative brain space, and Philip had moved out to Taylor. That left the group in the hands of Shlomi, Paige, and Mike to keep running. Under their guidance, the group has grown and matured into a very solid and well-respected writers’ group. They have done a magnificent job of building a strong virtual group that has kept the original tenants of no drama, solid feedback, and mutual support! BRAVO!
And who knows, now that I’m officially retired, I may very well be back!
[Certain post editors would love that!]
