arts. writing. culture.

I’ve had this problem lately of missing time with two essential things in my life:  Friends and creative writing.  Luckily my friends love writing and I’ve managed to figure out a way to combine the two via computer.

While I love my friends dearly and always try to make time for them, there are some times I just can’t make it work and busy schedules prevent me from seeing them.  Meanwhile, work prevents me from my creative writing endeavors.  So, I’ve started a Yahoo Groups site for me and my friends to share our writing.  (This works just as well in Google, MSN, etc.)  Try starting one of your own!

How It Works:

The page consists of a forum board. Each week starts a new thread on that forum board.

1) Every week, we take turns choosing an assignment (Trust me—It’s much more fun than school).  This lends variety instead of one person picking every week.  Any genre is up for grabs: poetry, short stories, stream of consciousness.

2) We spend that week completing the project.  In our own time, at our own pace.

3) At the end of the week, we all post our interpretations of the assignment onto the board thread and comment on other member’s contributions under their posted work.

Now, I’ll never call this a substitute for sitting in a coffee shop with a close friend laughing and catching up on each others’ lives, gossiping, giving one another advice and spending true quality time with each other.

Nor would I call it a substitute for grabbing my beautiful leather-bound, tattered journal–sheets worn from my travels, ink soaking through the pages– and sitting in the corner of my favorite spot in my yard, coffee in hand (notice the trend), gushing my stream of thoughts into the only place where they really truly make sense ALL of the time (to me at least!)

This project is the best substitute I’ve found. It, more than most things, allows us a window into our friends’ feelings, views and crutches.  I’ve learned a lot about my friends through this project and then when we DO meet at the coffee shop, we’re all caught up on our lives and can get into the juicy details instead of surface-level updates.

Do you have a way that YOU combine time with friends with a hobby you’re passionate about?  Scrapbooking parties, tennis classes, etc.  Tell us about it in the comments section!