The Writing Group

Simone awoke to birdsong from the woods, as she had each morning of the retreat. The weather was always fine here, no wind other than the gentle sea breezes, no rain other than an occasional light squall blowing up from the bay below. The days were mild and sunny, the nights split by beautiful sunsets along the coast. The Group would gather at the tables with a few beers or on the lawn of the stone cottage. Everyone felt tired but stimulated by a long day’s work; writing was hard but rewarding. Simone always knew it would be and now here she was doing it with the others on the course, learning and striving to prove herself a good writer, a teller of stories, of human truth.

The Hosts called it the Halfway House. Half-way between the hilltops and the sea perhaps, maybe half-way between beginning and publication, although she dared not think about that. Just to make her writing as good as it could possibly be was enough, for now at least.

Jeanette was her mentor. The small dark-haired woman with the firey eyes spent her days coaching and coaxing her to greater heights of penmanship. To make her characters and story arc descriptive without being flowery, lean but not skeletal, factual with a light touch of magical realism. The plot must have legs (Jeanette told her), must convince, be logical and persuasive not dogmatic or hidebound. It must make the reader work a little but not too much, make them uncomfortable just enough for it to impact on their soul. That’s a very important ingredient Simone; you must reach for that in your work. Writing without soul is just telling stories. We want to actually be there, live in your characters’ heads, see what they see and feel what they feel. Get under your protagonist’s skin right down to their very soul. And don’t forget to write what you know.

“I thought that was just a cliché,” Simone had told her, “that great writers use their imagination, aren’t bound by personal experience.”

“Not in this case,” Jeanette had replied and Simone had seen the radiant evening light flash for an instant in those brown pupils burning them red. “You must find the deeper truth in your story, the underlying tensions and themes, but it has to be from you, from your own experience. See it as cathartic in a way. Live it again and again until the actions are pure and true. Only then will you have produced work of a quality high enough for the Halfway House. We have quite a reputation, after all.”

So Simone strived through the days and nights to make her story ‘sing with truth’ the way Jeanette had described. The other novice writers had been asked the same, she supposed. No-one spoke much now, or socialized, or even commented on the individual pieces when the group read them out at the end of each day. A smile or frown was the best anyone got. She was the same; the stories all seemed too personal somehow for critique. When the reader had finished they would sigh and move their shoulders momentarily, as if a weight had been lifted. Then, as if maybe realizing the work had far to go, that it didn’t ‘sing’ sufficiently, they would sink despondently back into their seats. She was no different; the truth was tough for everyone but particularly those in Halfway House.

“Your main character is still flawed.” Jeanette told her on the fourth morning of the course. Or it might have been the fifth, or the ninth. Time was difficult to measure inside the old stone house. “Her reactions are described but not her innermost thoughts, her…” She broke off to glance out of the bay window at the glaring sunset fringing the bay and again Simone saw something flash in her eyes, turning the dark brown pupils momentarily to a laser red. As Jeanette looked back at her there seemed a random cruelness to the contours of her face. “You have to tell me, tell the reader, why she did what she did.” She suddenly thrust her face into Simone’s, her long black curls bobbing, eye’s wild with fury. “I want you to make her heart bleed for what she did to that poor little boy!”

Simone thought the group now secretly hated the writing. They hid in their rooms, only coming out at meal times or to shower before bed. The staccato tap of keyboards was the only sound left in the draughty cottage. You could hear it from the lawn, like the patter of rain on the old slate roof. There were no group critiques anymore; just self-imposed prisons of writing and re-writing and yet more frenzied finger-tapping as if all were gripped with the task of trying to break the code that would release them from Halfway House.

Every now and then she heard the muted voices of the Hosts from behind closed doors. They sounded increasingly reproachful, even threatening;

‘But put yourself in the place of the bullied child.’

‘You say the government forced him to kill, but did it?’

‘She took away his pride and honour then she just stood and watched him die…’

Her torturer would visit her with more revisions, more demands for the truth. Finally Simone stayed up through the night, began again and again until, as dawn broke, she knew it was the best she could ever do. At that moment she found her torturer standing silently beside her. Jeanette bent over her shoulder and clicked through the document then put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.

“Yes Simone, that’s it. Well done. The others will take comfort from your success.” She turned to open the door. “Follow me.”

Jeanette led her through the chilly cottage and out across the lawn. Simone saw they were on one of the pathways down to the cliffs. She followed across the moorland until abruptly there was no more path; just a churning sea stretched out below them towards the rising sun.

Jeanette turned to face her. “Thank-you for your confession Simone. Taking those pills and leaving your little boy all alone in the world has damned you of course. You can never go back and make it right but perhaps these last few days have made it bearable for you to finally accept what you did. Bearable for all eternity I mean.” As she reached for Simone’s hand her eye’s burned red with the reflection of a million fires. “Now if you’re ready we’ll go. Don’t worry. Just like writing, the first step is always the hardest…”