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The Old Town Writing Group

That’s the myth. In reality, most writers need people. In reality, most writers go soft with no deadline, no one waiting on the other edge of the computer screen. Some unchecked stories get loose and meandering, some unchecked egos balloon exponentially, only to deflate rapidly with the obnoxious farting sound of self-pity. Most writers need a balance, a grounding mechanism, a central command to report to.

Most writing is enhanced by nuts-and-bolts concepts: workshopping, feedback, and revisions. While these craft-centric ideas may not sound sexy, the finished product is. Smart, cogent writing peer-reviewed and trimmed of unnecessary fat? Sexy. Smart, cogent writing about sex peer-reviewed and trimmed of unnecessary fat? Extra-super-sexy. This is the M.O. behind “Savage Night,” a Valentines Day reading put on by The Old Town Writing Group, a six-woman band of established Fort Collins authors who aim to share their work and the benefits of self-starting a writing collective.

The OTWG is comprised of serious writers — authors, academics, and freelancers.  The women’s combined experience gives the club a level of professionalism not always present in community writing groups. The collective, which includes renowned novelist Laura Resau, whose book The Red Glass was an Oprah pick, and Carrie Visintainer, a travel writer and essayist whose work has appeared in Get Born and Travelers' Tales The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008 anthology, runs a tight ship. The group keeps its membership small and strictly requires attendance and engagement. New members are chosen through an involved application process.

Visintainer says she appreciates the disciplined approach.

“Rather than saying, ‘we all love writing and we love literature, let’s come together and discuss it,’ to have an actual structured idea of what you are planning to do with your time together makes it a lot more effective for everybody.”

While Americans tend to equate structure with boredom and freewheelin’ with excitement, the OTWG stamps out any fear of overcooked technicality with decidedly raw subject matter. For Savage Night, group members are planning to read some of their most honest and revealing work.

“We’ve gotten feedback at our readings that’s like, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this as far as the work you are willing to read in front of an audience,’” says Visintainer. “I think it’s easy maybe to read pieces that are more surface, and superficial, but we are all willing to take it deeper than that.”

Here are excerpts from some of the planned readings at Old Town Writing Group’s “Savage Night.” The OTWG consists of Carrie Visintainer, Sarah Ryan, Laura Resau, Molly Reid, Leslie Patterson, and Kimberly Fields.

Carrie Visintainer will read "Please Not Nudism Forbidden," which appears in the Fall 2009 issue of Get Born:

“A man with grey curls, fully naked, strides though the sand and then suddenly stops to face the sea. His shoulders and back are the color of baked clay. He lifts his arms over his head in one swift motion and begins to bend and twist in a sequence that might be tai chi. I watch, captivated by his total lack of self consciousness as his skin sags and dangles with the flow of his movements. When he drops into the splits, I look away.”

Leslie Patterson will be reading a selection from “Everything Conspires,” a story based on one of the great romantic scandals of the 19th Century—the dissolution of John Ruskin’s unconsummated marriage to Effie Gray. In this excerpt, Effie discovers desire after she has been left alone in the Scottish Highlands with Ruskin’s handsome young protégé, John Everett Millais.

“In the weeks after the haircut, Effie and Everett dared not touch. For any sort of public union, they needed to wait for the day that she might extricate herself from her husband, but privately Effie swallowed a lock of the young artist’s curly hair. She felt it tickle and gag in her throat until she worried that it might come up again like the fur of a tongue-groomed housecat. It stayed down. And she imagined the hair growing inside her, twining about her heart, stretching between her thighs.”

Molly Reid will read three short shorts. Here is an excerpt from "Finger:"

“If the prosthesis were to shatter, he didn't know what he'd do. It was what reminded him of her. His sacrifice. When she came back, she'd admire the new finger even more than the old one - its translucent charm, the way it caught the light, a refracted brilliance recalling the full moon's silver glow on the surface of a certain tranquil lake they'd once made love beside. So he protected it. Dipped it in Windex and rubbed it with a soft white cloth, staying home most of the time in order to keep it from the potential dangers of this world.”

Laura Resau will read a selection from her award-winning novel, Red Glass:

"When Mom first announced that her Bosnian war refugee great-aunt was coming to live with us, I'd pictured a skeletal woman in a shawl, deep half-moon shadows beneath haunted eyes.  But Dika came with mounds of flesh and cheap jewelry, a wardrobe of tight turquoise shirts, white capri pants, peroxided hair.  She inserted herself into our lives loudly.  I wasn't completely convinced she was even our relative."

Sarah Ryan will read "Love Lake," an essay about love, marriage, and counseling.

"I should be meeting with a palm reader instead of a marriage counselor. I want Roy to look me in the eyes and tell me that my fiancée and I will live happily ever after—or that we're a shipwreck and I should run—but he won't. Instead, he listens for an hour while I work my way through a box of Kleenex and a chest of fears. I unpack the fears, smallest to biggest, holding them up to the light where they look like fishing nets, as menacing as they are insubstantial."

Check out this recent post on the OTWG from the The Writing Bug Blog: http://the-writing-bug.blogspot.com/

Old Town Writing Group’s “Savage Night” will be held at The Bean Cycle/Matter Bookstore, 144 N. College in Fort Collins on Sunday, February 14, 7pm. The event is free and open to the public.