When I walked into the retirement home for the first time as the new volunteer leader of their writing group, I thought I was prepared. After all, I’d been teaching writing for years, both at the college level and in a variety of non-academic settings—a maximum security prison, a public library, a high school. I had pulled together some writing exercises, chosen some exemplary texts to share.
I proceeded to direct the first few sessions in the way I was accustomed to. The writers arrived at each session with writing to share by reading out loud. I responded to each reading by zeroing in on specific decisions of style and content in order to offer advice. I shared examples of published writing to both illustrate certain writing techniques and offer inspiration for further writing.
The writers in the group were so polite—and I so obtuse—that it took me a few weeks to understand that I was leading the group incorrectly. It took one man simply telling me directly that he had no idea what the prompt had been for the week. Then I saw that I had been teaching the class I wanted to teach, not leading the group that the writers wanted to be a part of.
The general lesson I learned is simple, and perhaps obvious: in a community writing group, the words that come into being may be influenced by the relationship between the leader and the group members, but all the meaning ultimately comes from the group members. If the work produced is not meaningful to them, then it is not meaningful. It’s the responsibility of the leader to understand not how to improve the group’s writing, but what the group needs, and to seek to meet that need.
I have also found that a writing group leader, even more than a teacher, must be a good listener. For the writers in the group at the retirement home, more important than the idea of looking critically at their own writing, or improving their writing abilities, was the chance to share their words and their lives with each other, to be heard. My role was less to instruct than it was to listen. This role extended to my task of marking work—it was more important (and, to be frank, more enjoyable) to simply note my moments of connection with their words than it was to offer critical commentary. As we became used to each other, and I became comfortable with the groups’ procedures, the writers commented several times how the process of listening and writing made past moments come to life for them again. We were together amazed by how much they were able to remember. Being in the college classroom for so long had made me lose touch with this liberatory power of putting words on paper.
I also found that it was important for me to think of myself as a participant in the group as well as the nominal leader. Instead of designing exercises to be bestowed from on high, I challenged myself to find and share one poem each week that I loved. (I tried to find poems both full of feeling and interestingly framed, like Philip Larkin’s “First Sight.”) For each poem, I simply talked about why I loved it, and how the writer’s attention to language made possible its exploration and sharing of meaning. I was still teaching writing, but more importantly, I was sharing. I learned that in a community writing group, it is more important to be part of the circle than it is to be in charge.
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Rob Roensch writes short stories. He teaches at Oklahoma City University.