thanate | Nov. 7th, 2013

Nov. 7th, 2013

The Megatherium and I journeyed down to Tysons Corner Mall for lunch yesterday to meet up with

jazzfish while he's in town. At least moderate amounts of fun were had by all, though her wiggleness clearly had the most fun while busily charming everyone within smileshot and spitting small bits of chips all over me (presumably once she'd got the salt off.) She's on the cusp of standing by herself (we're up to a very deliberate five seconds or so at a time) and as of yesterday is also thoroughly enjoying waving her arms above her head, often with things in them. This morning she put this skill to good use by discovering she could play peekaboo all in her own actions when I handed her a (freshly washed canvas) grocery bag to hold onto as we shopped.

Anyway. One of the things that came up briefly in conversation was the different characters of local writing groups, and how that matches up with what one is looking for. Which in turn lead me to consider again what it is that I want from a writing group, anyway. More on that in a moment.

Tysons Corner is the mall I grew up with, which is to say that my first memory of it is of waiting in line with my cousin to go see Return of the Jedi in the theater that was replaced by the Rainforest Cafe, which in turn was replaced by an entire new wing of the mall with a 3rd floor theater in which I saw... Pride and Prejudice, and Harry Potter 4, I think? and just had lunch yesterday. So, that's about 18 years. And I still miss the cute little game stores, and remember waiting, quite bored, while my father looked at things in Brookstone when it was still a tool store (tho the tray of polymerated sand they had out front this time was seriously cool!) but now they've gone all swank and there's a Tesla store. And a little conveyor-belt sushi bit between the far escalators. And an American Girl shop, which only went in after I moved up here, so I'd never been. And I wandered into Pottery Barn Kids of all places and discovered Green Toys, who have a nice rocket ship and a tea set and a bunch of other things at pretty standard toy prices, made in the US entirely from recycled milk jug plastic. So, cool.

The other place I wandered into because I'd heard of it but never been was Restoration Hardware. The front was full of LED-branched trees (which I love, but they take up so much space...) & a ridiculous fur collection. (Your wine bottles do not need fake arctic fox coats, I promise!) But then I got to the back bit and there was this bathosphereish bar in a room with pre-battered leather sofas and a desk in a giant steamer trunk and some larger relatives of the Demonic Chibi Springbok skull I got at the thrift store the other week, and I want to rent this space for a writers' & artists' version of an 18th century gentleman's club.

I suspect there aren't a lot of places in the world with a critical mass of solvent and interested parties to keep up a subscription-service artists club full-time, and you'd need lounge space and work space (writing rooms? study cubicles?) and some sort of cafe thing, and there are all sorts of "wrong" community dynamics you could end up with and spoil everyone's fun. But a girl can dream, right? And on the whole, I'm not presently in the market for a critique-specific writing group, not least because this entry has already surpassed my nano wordcount for the month, half of which isn't even fiction. Right at the moment just having people around to talk writing with-- not on the computer, where I keep queueing (cueing? both?) up stories I want to read and then closing the tabs without even getting to them. Having a good group of people to talk about writing with can lead to the sorts of conversations where you solicit beta readers by the project, and in my case is likely to inspire more actual writing as well, both of which are more useful to me than round table critique sessions.

And then

StevenBrust pointed out that 4th Street Fantasy registration is open, and I went to look at it and there's this thing called a writing seminar. Which advertises to be people talking about writing. (and, ok, 3 of 4 are people I more-or-less know, two of whom I've already heard talk about writing? But they seem to be good at it.) I don't know if I'm actually going to be up for trekking out to 4th St anyway-- it's a long way away, and bracketed by Balticon on Memorial day weekend (which is local and probably my starter con for sorting out how much non-Mommy time the Megatherium is up for) and Traincon/Readercon in July, so, possibly a bit much. But it does sound potentially lovely.