For about a year now I have been a participant in the Kitchener Public Library (KPL) Writers’ Collective. I was delighted to discover the collective in the run up to Kitchener’s Word on the Street 2009 event and gladly committed myself to the monthly meetings where members share and discuss each other’s work. The collective isn’t well-publicised, so there isn’t much point in searching for it online. But I assure you that it does in fact exist.
The members of the collective range from beginners to published authors. Most participants seem to have been with the collective since its inception, a small but dedicated group. There are enough members at the moment for 3 groups of up to 8 participants. A group will stay together throughout the year with new members able to join in the autumn. Ideally each member will submit up to 5 pages from a work in progress, a short story or novel, or a set of poems. Discussion is mixed, often impressionistic, sometimes insightful, but always a bit awkward. It’s not exactly what I envisioned, having previously only heard about the writers circles that met in England, but it suffices. What you imagine, perhaps, is a small group of like minded individuals gathering over a glass or wine and a nibble of cheese with light classical music in the background. This collective is a bit more institutional. Meetings are held in whatever board rooms can be appropriated at various branch libraries. Glaring fluorescent lighting and hard backed chairs keep us focused on the task at hand. There is no wine.
There are good reasons, I take it, for the setting. Disclosure of personal information, even such details as one’s surname, is kept to a minimum. The collective members tend to stay on a first name basis, exchanging their monthly submissions through an intermediary within the KPL. Thus avoiding the need even to exchange email addresses. Yet there is a perhaps unlooked-for benefit of such a design. The critiquing of one’s work remains superficially objective, or at least not personal. There is plenty of scope for learning in such an environment, and little need to take all criticism to heart.
Still, I sometimes wonder what my ideal writing club would be like. It would need a frisson of disagreement, a pinch of daring, a serious attitude to the hard work of craft, maybe softer chairs, and, yes, perhaps a post-meeting glass of wine. But for now I’ll be happy to stick with the KPL Writers’ Collective and see how things go.