A MAGICAL HOUR OF WRITING
Local writers find community, motivation and focus at weekly meeting
By Harriet Sigerman
Walk into Perch Home on Thursdays around 10:00 a.m., and you’ll spot a group of people, including me, huddled over laptops typing away or writing the old-fashioned way with pen and paper. We’re all members of a local chapter of Shut Up and Write!, an international group that promotes dedicated writing time and fellowship.
“I’d been working on a novel for two years and getting nowhere,” recalls Elaine Durbach. “This hour of putting our heads down all together in this beautiful place is like a magical hour for me. It’s gotten me going. It gave me momentum, just being with other writers and being committed to absolute concentration.”
“I knew right away that this was a call to me for starting to do my own writing,” says Rona Kwestel, who first saw a posting for the SOMA Shut Up & Write! group on Facebook. “And that’s why I came to the initial meeting, and I have barely missed a meeting since it started. I love coming here.”
The basic philosophy of Shut Up & Write! is butt in the chair to finally work on that writing project that has been percolating for two weeks or 10 years. “The name is the whole philosophy,” proclaims the Shut Up & Write! website, shutupwrite.com. “Stop talking about writing. Sit down and do it.”
Shut Up & Write! understands that “writing is solitary work, and solitary work is easy to skip.” The group’s organizing principle is to bring people together for shared writing time. Member Eric Singer says, “One of the things that this group has been most helpful for me is being able to just knock out an hour early in the day. It’s always just straight productivity.”
Diego Centurion is writing a futuristic horror novel. He lives in Morristown but comes almost every week and says our group “has become the place where I go whenever I feel stuck with my writing. Sometimes an hour here is more effective than three hours near my town.”
Founded in 2007 at a café in San Francisco, Shut Up & Write! now boasts more than a thousand in-person and online writing groups in over 80 countries – and here in Maplewood. There is no fee to join, and participants can come and go as they please.
The SOMA group is open to anyone doing any kind of writing, from a book to private journaling. It began a year and a half ago when Ingrid Wickelgren, a freelance science journalist and editor, and I, newly retired and trying to work on a long-dormant ghost story, wanted to find a communal setting in which to write. Wickelgren was writing a mystery and often used online Shut Up & Write! groups to motivate her. “But I really wanted to get out of the house!” She learned about an in-person group in Westfield. She and I attended one meeting and thoroughly enjoyed it. But getting there when the group starts to write at 8:30 a.m. was tough, so we decided to form our own group.
We chose to meet at Perch and secured permission from its welcoming owner, Michele Bessey. Then we posted information online and hung up fliers in Maplewood and South Orange. We had no idea whether anyone would show up. Three people – Wickelgren, Kwestel, and I – came to the first meeting, and a few more people joined us the following week. From then on, the number of participants has steadilyincreased. Perch is the perfect venue because Bessey and the store manager, Mackenzie Troncone, have reserved a corner for us with outlets for charging computers. At the store’s café, we can fortify ourselves with coffee, tea andsnacks while we write.
Now anywhere from four to 10 people meet weekly for a concentrated hour of writing. Our members are working on mysteries, sci-fi and fantasy novels, technical articles, Substacks,
children’s fiction and nonfiction, adult nonfiction and even board games. The group includes published and unpublished writers. Autumn Wagner, a recent expatriate from the Northwest who is also writing a novel, claims, “For the first time I am able to put the necessary focus on completing my novel on a daily basis. Shut Up & Write! was the very first foundational pier for that.”
For us, a typical Shut Up & Write! session begins with participants arriving around 9:30 a.m., ordering coffee or tea and kibitzing awhile. At 9:50 Wickelgren sets an alarm, and we all
start writing. An hour later, at 10:50, the alarm – the sound of a quacking duck – goes off, and people reluctantly stop writing. Everyone takes turns briefly describing what they’re working
on. Then we circle back and home in on any writing issues or challenges we’re having, from character development and plot concerns to the best software programs for keeping settings
and characters straight.
Peter Bodtke, who is working on a screenplay, says Shut Up & Write!“gives me a regular place to come, camaraderie, shared resources, and tips, tricks, secrets of the masters all revealed.”
Any issues pertaining to writing are on the table, and participants eagerly share their writing struggles, breakthroughs and additional thoughts about their writing experience. Says Wickelgren: “I’ve been surprised by how helpful the other participants have been. I’ve learned
new ways to track progress, motivate myself and organize my novel.”
Participants also suggest sources and contacts who could be helpful for a writing project or offer insights on how to craft the writing. Carl Hall is working on a history of white supremacy and sometimes feels lost in the research. “I came to the group because I believed the interaction would be helpful to me, to try to get a handle on how to write a story.”
In our weekly writing sessions, we laugh and commiserate about our writing challenges and cheer
each other on to keep writing. We’ve created a little writing community. Kwestel happily remarks, “I love the intellectual activity that happens among this group and just the space to write what you need to write and say what you need to say. I love being part of the group.”
Kathie Reilly, the newest member, adds, “This [group] provides me discipline to work on a memoir that I started years ago and what, I think and hope, is low-risk feedback in a comfortable, familiar community environment.”
As for me, I’ve written four picture book stories since co-founding the group. But I’m still trying to figure out why the ghost has come back in my original story. So, if you’re also struggling with an uncooperativeghost, other stubborn characters,a sticky plot point or simply wantwriting support, join us at Perch onThursday mornings around 9:30 for a companionable and productive hour of writing.
Harriet Sigerman has published several books on American women’s history for middle-grade and college-age readers. She wished she had had the benefit of a Shut Up & Write! group while she
was struggling to finish them.
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