LWRS

I mentioned LWRS in my last post, and I wanted to expound a little upon what it was for those of you who were not in it with me. The acronym LWRS stands for "Leisure Writing and Reading Society." Does that name sound a little pretentious? Yes. Were the members of LWRS a little pretentious at times? Also yes. So it seemed to fit. Charles, Evan, Tyler and myself would meet once a week and we alternated discussing a great book that we were reading or share a piece of our writing. Usually this took the form of a short story, but we got into writing a little poetry, a short play, a random narrative, chapters of a potential novel, etc.

Everyone writes from time to time, I am pretty confident in that. And if you don't, you should. I know I have kept journals and written on certain topics in the past that I was very embarrassed to share with anybody. Then I got to talking to one of my friends, Joe, who is pursuing writing as a career. He would go to readings where he would read his works and I started to realize that it was okay to put yourself out there in your writing. What is the worst that could happen? Someone doesn't like it or think it's not worth anything, perhaps. Who really cares? How are we every going to know if we have a skill for something unless we put it out there for others to see. That was part of the motivation behind LWRS. I had been writing things for no one to read for a couple years, then I started to wonder if I was any good at it, or if it was just something I like to do. I have yet to answer that question, but I can say that it feels good to get more comfortable with people reading things that I have written and give me feedback. I now have a better idea of what works in my writing, and what doesn't.

I would encourage everyone who reads this (yes, all 3 of you) and enjoys writing to get together with a couple or a few friends and share some writing with each other. Once you get past the initial awkward stage (for our first meeting, we sat around for about a half hour chatting about nothing, looking nervous, and delaying the inevitable of the others reading our piece) then it is really rewarding and exciting.

You don't need a pretentious name for your group, or a name at all, but I think it might be more fun that way. I may post some of the things I wrote for the group on here or at least excerpts of some of the longer ones. That's all for now.