Measuring my progress

This week I've come into contact with other people's writing from my local writing community for the first time for six months.  Lockdown has meant writing in isolation and not being able to share that writing with anyone.  It's meant I couldn't get feedback on what I'm doing, and I can't see how I'm  doing against other writers.

So getting together with Havant and District Writers' Circle for our annual retreat day last Sunday was an absolute joy.   Just in time, the lockdown regulations eased to allow adult community learning providers to get back to providing courses and training, so we were able to go ahead as planned.

Our workshop leader, the excellent Charlie Cochrane, is a gay romance and crime writer, and the Circle enjoyed the workshop she did for us last year so much that we invited her back to challenge us again.

She set us the challenge of writing a meeting between two disparate characters.  We had to choose two cards with names on them and write a dialogue between them.  When you get a mis-match like James Bond and Charlotte Bronte, that makes the exercise challenging.  On both occasions the result has been some sparkling prose from the members.

It's on occasions like this that I remember how good writers the members of the Circle are.   They're willing to be challenged and pushed to extend their skills by exercises like this.  Over the years they've given me invaluable feedback on my own writing, especially on first chapters where I've been rambling.

I've also been measuring my progress as a writer in a different way this week.  I'm a slush reader/editor for local environmental project Pens of the Earth, and this week I've been slush reading for our next submission window.  Going through the submissions has shown me how many of the writers don't know how to edit their work.  I suspect that in some cases the writer will not even be aware that their work needs editing.  This is the biggest area of my own learning during the last decade.  I've trained myself to take a break from the work, and to take a mental step back to spot what I've missed.

Measuring my work against those other writers, I can see that mine is pretty good.  I really don't think I'm deluding myself that I can write, even if I still can't persuade anyone to buy it.