“Want To”
It was more or less by accident that Sara discovered the Want to Writes. She was texting with an old college friend about her loss of motivation. He said he didn’t know if being part of a writing group helped with his motivation, but it had at least given him some comrades to laugh with over the annoying parts of being a writer. Sara said she had no idea how to find a local writing group, and he said he found his at the local library. Checking the website of her local library, Sara found that one of the groups that met there were the Want to Writes, who met the first Wednesday of every month, and were open to all writers needing “support and motivation.”
The next first Wednesday found her at the Janice T. Blithe Library. It was a modest one-story brick building, which shared a parking lot with the post office. Sara loved the idea of libraries, and had spent a great deal of time in her local one growing up, but now with everything online, it wasn’t her needing to find something to read, it was needing to find time to read all she had access to. When she had moved to this town two years ago, she had gone and gotten a library card, but more as an obligation. She didn’t think she had been back since.
The main doors led directly to the front desk. To the right was the kid’s area and half-a-dozen computers, along with a couple shelves of movies and music CDs. To the left were the multiple shelves of books.
“Can I help you?” the older woman at the desk asked.
“Uh, I’m looking for the writing group.”
The lady smiled. “They’re in Meeting Room A.”
Sara’s blank expression must have been enough of a question, for the lady pointed to her right and explained, “If you go down this first aisle, you’ll see the restrooms and the meeting rooms are next to them.”
“Thank you.”
Moments later, Sara was standing in the doorway of Meeting Room A. The room held a rectangular table with ten chairs around it. The wall across from the door had a white board with “Want to Writes” written on it, and the other walls had various inspirational posters. Little else could fit in the room.
Three people already sat at the far end of the table, and they were all chuckling. At the head was a woman probably in her forties who smiled at Sara and asked, “Are you a writer looking to join us?”
“Yes.”
“Splendid. Come in.”
Sara walked down one side of the table, and took the seat next to a man with a long grey beard probably in his sixties. Across the table was a twenty-something person with a non-binary flag pin on their shirt.
“Let me introduce ourselves,” the woman said. “I’m Amelia, and I’m working on a series of short stories following a Sherlock Holmes type character in Ancient Rome.” Indicating the man next to Sara, Amelia stated, “This is Michael. He writes Westerns.”
Michael smiled and added with a slow, gravelly voice, “Most of them are about some character barely surviving a terrible winter.”
Pointing to the person across the table, Amelia said, “And this is Jay. They write science fiction short stories set in a utopian future.”
“Near utopian,” Jay explained. “There are still some technical and social issues, but the stories are more of a compare and contrast to the … stuff currently happening.”
Sara nodded. “Those all sound interesting. Especially the Sherlock Holmes idea. My dad had the complete set of stories, and as a kid I probably read through it seven or eight times. That was probably my first introduction to literature.
“Oh, I’m Sara, by the way. I write the occasional short story, but I have a fantasy trilogy I’m slowly hammering out.”
“If I may ask,” Michael asked, “why ‘slowly?’”
Sara started to answer, but stopped herself.
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Michael said.
“No. No.” Sara shook her head. “It’s …. I could probably give twenty different reasons, from stress from my day job, to the repeated disappointments of working really hard on a short story to post on my blog only to have nobody comment on it. And all of them are true. But I think the biggest reason, is just … the thrill is gone.”
“In what way?” Jay asked.
Sara shrugged. “The story is about this prophecy that everyone thinks means one thing, but at the end it’s revealed it’s to be read a different way. And there’s a few red herrings along the way to keep the readers guessing. Which was fun to figure all out, but now I have to write the thing.”
Michael smiled and tapped the table by Amelia. “She sounds a bit like Frank.”
Amelia nodded, then explained. “Frank was one of our original members.” Looking at Jay, she asked, “I don’t know if you ever met him.”
Jay shook their head. “I don’t think so.”
“About a year ago his dad had a heart attack, and Frank moved back to Oregon to be close and help out. I haven’t talked to him in a couple of months. I should see how he’s doing.
“Anyway, the reason you reminded Michael of him is he tried to finish every story he wrote within a month, otherwise he lost interest.”
Michael added, “He was a welder, so he just went over and over his stories in his head while he worked and just typed up the latest version when he got home. He used to say that the tenth time through a story is still fun, but the hundredth is a slog. So he only worked on stories he could finish in a couple of weeks.”
Sara nodded. “I can see the appeal.”
Jay sighed.
Patting their hand, Amelia said, “Don’t worry.” She then explained to Sara, “They’ve just started their first … possible novel.”
“I’ve gotten almost 4,000 words, and it just feels like I’ve scratched the surface,” Jay said.
“Oh, those are fun,” Michael said.
“I wish you success,” Sara said. “I didn’t want my story to be demotivating.”
Jay smiled. “No. I knew starting a novel would be, uh, sink or swim. I had to start one some time.”
“Just so you know Sara,” Ameila stated, “this is pretty much how our meetings go. We talk about news, and sometimes somebody shares something they wrote, but most of the time we just chat for an hour or so about something that deals with writing. But not always.”
Sara nodded. “I think there are days were that would be what I needed.”
The three smiled and nodded.
Michael then said to Amelia, “The name.”
“Oh, yes. In case you’re wondering, why is this the Want to Writes. Years ago, I read an interview with some famous author who said something like, ‘Too many people want to have written,’ meaning they don’t want to put their butt in a seat and do the work to put words on pages. I could google to see who said that, but I’d likely get some AI slop answer, but the importance is the idea. That’s the point of the group. We’re just a group of writing friends who get together to help out each other when we can.”
Sara smiled. “That sounds great. It may be just what I need.”
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For each story I publish, I like to give the backstory, or anything interesting that happened while writing it. You can see what I wrote for this story on my Published Works page.
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If you liked this story, you might want to check out The Uncapped Pen, my collection of fifty of my stories dealing with writing in some fashion.
