I had my first writers’ group session today in Caroll Gardens, Brooklyn. Remember The Cosby Show? Well everytime I’m in this neck of the woods, I always think of Heathcliff Huxtable, M.D. with his downstairs OB/GYN practice and five kids and attorney wife. Who would be crazy enough to have their practice downstairs in NYC?! Anyway, I digress…

So there’s seven people in the group, one was absent. Two Wall Street people, a teacher, a fresh NYU college grad (ah, to be so young again), and a copywriter. What does a copywriter do anyway? When asked about my background as a writer, I told the group that the only workshop I ever took was as a freshman at NYU where I was forever delegated to a B+ on each paper I submitted. I told them how it dismayed me that the highest grade I ever got was a B+/A- (can someone please tell me what the hell that means?) I described my experience writing short articles for local newspapers about medical stuff and medical journals about boring science stuff.  What I didn’t tell them is that I have unlimited determination and I will be a published non-medical author in two years. You can quote me on that. No one likes a gunner, right?

I was very impressed with the group. Very erudite, as to be expected. Who would join a writers’ group of their own volition on a Monday evening? The first session we went over an Andre Dubus short story, Killings and then did some short exercises. One of them was writing a story using five words that were randomly picked. If memory serves me right, the words were: pearl, canyon, latte, India, sunlight. Some of the stories that were generated by my fellow writers were pretty impressive. So, it’s 9:30 PM and my eyelids were starting to droop, and my brain synapses were barely functioning at this time, but this is what I managed to put together:

They were sitting on the edge, looking out at the canyon below. She asked, “I wonder if this is what India looks like? Does Mt. Everest have such deep canyons?” She was fingering the single pearl on her ring. The sunlight was suddenly covered by some low-lying clouds giving them a bit of cover from the brightness. He turned and looked at her while she was playing with her ring, “Well, this sure ain’t New York. Can’t get a latte for miles ahead.”

I submitted one of my short stories to two writing competitions today : Zoetrope and Glimmertrain.

Onward and forward troop!