A Writers' Roundtable on Orcas

As our week on Orcas Island was winding down, I made time Saturday afternoon to attend a Writers' Roundtable at the public library. I went with modest expectations. I left with a sense that, with some practice and discipline, I just might be able to tap my creativity in ways I hadn't imagined.

What's more, I felt as if I'd glimpsed what life could be like if I were a full-time or even seasonal island resident. More on that later...

Discussion leader Jennifer Brennock, a graduate student completing her MFA in Creative Writing at Vermont's Goddard College, came well prepared for the two-hour session. She led us through an ice-breaker (tell one thing about a coming and one thing about a going, as you introduce yourself); some readings and handouts; and, finally, a free-writing exercise that saw nearly all of us -- four men and 16 women, mostly in their 40s and 50s -- read aloud from our hastily constructed stories.

The topic? The pregnant pause: "writing that is stewing in stillness between two significant happenings.” Think of it, Jennifer said, as the author intentionally slowing down the narrative and focusing tension on all or something that has come before. The reader knows something more is going to happen but the writer uses the pregnant pause as a set-up rather than as a point of resolution. A key character may be ruminating about something but hasn't yet decided or acted on it.

Put another way, the pregnant pause is like a bridge between what's happened already and what is yet to come. Jennifer read from Jhumpa Lahiri's “A Temporary Matter,” one of nine short stories in her Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies. Then, she had each of us draw two slips of paper from a cloth purse and write a pregnant pause based on the random pairings. I drew "getting fired" and "a nervous breakdown."

My first instinct was to write about them in that sequence but I decided to reverse the order -- to have the breakdown lead to the firing. I could have made it first person but I decided to write from a wife's point of view. In the pregnant pause, she reflects on the signs of her husband's emotional stress and grudgingly accepts the reality of his new situation. And that would set up how she'd deal with it.

I was pleased that I could knock out 300 words in 20 minutes and have that rough draft be so well received by others in the room. I was struck by people's creativity in framing their stories, as well as their sense of humor, their willingness to share and, in some cases, the quality of their prose. I also realized that, as a lifelong journalist, I may have crossed a threshold of my own in considering other forms of writing -- whether it be fiction, poetry or song lyrics.

Most of all, I left with a realization that it wouldn't take much to get plugged into the local writing community. These roundtables happen on the second Saturday of each month at the library. Next month, the second annual Orcas Island Writers Festival will spill out over four days. And, I know from past visits, that there are any number of book readings, workshops and other events going on year-round.

We're not due to visit the island again until Thanksgiving, so it seems nearly certain that I won't hook up with these fellow writers again until sometime next spring, when Lori and I can spend more than just a long weekend on Orcas. I'll be looking forward to it.

Above photo by Lori Rede: Moonlight on Orcas Island