Writers group met today on Kent State's campus. It was one of those lovely, warm, sunny, Fall days when you stop to eat lunch on a picnic table and wish you didn't have to go back to the office.
There is the scurry of heavy traffic, commuter students trying to find parking. It is early in the semester and people are still attending classes. Syllabae are passed out around long conference tables and students text each other when the prof isn't looking. In between classes they talk about what they are dropping and why.
In the Women's Center, all is quiet. We listen to a poet read her work. There is silence. She waits for the group to write comments in the white space around the words. And then, slowly and thoughtfully, there are suggestions about a line break, a possible word choice that will fit the tone better. Someone offers a different title. The last line of one of my sevenling needs some kind of expansion on the idea of "Strange attractors"--from quantum mechanics.
We have worked together this way for nearly five years. I trust them to tell me when a word sticks out like an orange hat in an Amish buggy. I can ask about technical details, or word derivation, or about the usefulness of paring already spare lines. It takes a long time to trust that you will be given the best ideas a person has, because that's what we owe each other. Encouragement is wonderful and always appreciated. But sometimes the best friend is the one who sharpens your prose.
Almost always, what is necessary, is to think more clearly about the idea itself--to go for the pearl of great price. It is always worth the wading into muck, and the digging.
Critique and revision- Like breathing out and breathing in.
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