In Motherwords Writing Group

So I'm halfway done with leading my Mothers Writing Group, and I have to say it is one of the best things ever!

We are a small group; there are five of us. But we are a really deep, funny, intense collection of mothers with hellaciously interesting stories and, if I say so myself, some truly badass writing chops. My writing chops have gotten so rusty. Rusted shut, pretty much. But part of our agreement together has been a commitment to write at least three pages a day, just for ourselves. And I manage to do this almost every day. It has cleared out a layer of muck and shit I knew was there, but didn't remember how to get rid of.

Oh, write it out.

So the format , as it were, for each session is

Centering
Write/Read: 3 minute writing on what happened last week, and where you are "at" tonight

...and then I have a list of writing prompts, which we have rarely used because we've tended to talk a lot and the prompts tend to come out of the conversation. My rough idea for the first four classes was to loosely follow some themes: the body, the sisterhood of motherhood, our own parents, our own children. And it has roughly followed this trajectory, though we've been writing about our mothers a whole lot. At first it was all about the fathers, and I thought we'd stay there for a while, but we moved on to our mothers. Our children have now managed to appear here and there. Some really terrific pieces are taking form in the midst of all this.

I plan to continue the Mothers Writing Group. I don't want to lose the ground or the momentum I've gained. So we will see.

We are keeping a secret blog. We will be doing a public reading, Sunday August 30 at Bookwoman, 430-6 pm.

Let me know if you're interested in the prompts, mamas.