By the beginning of January, I’d been sharing my work in my writing group for several months. At our first meeting after the New Year, there were a bunch of unfamiliar faces, new attendees inspired to set a resolution about finally writing their own book.
I was the only memoirist in the group. When I read aloud from my manuscript, I was not writing about fictional characters. I was writing about myself. I was the “I” in my work.
Even when my writing group’s feedback was critical, it was always kind and supportive, too. I was sharing stories about some of the worst things that ever happened to me – struggling with infertility, being diagnosed with a chronic inflammatory condition, learning my partner of 17 years was living a double life – and everyone in my writing group treated my writing with sensitivity, even (especially!) when sharing suggestions for what I could do better.
That January night, I read a piece I’d been working on about the moment I learned of my ex-husband’s infidelity: I found a journal where he wrote about being with his affair partner in dated entries going back two years. I finished reading the excerpt aloud, and my fellow writers began offering their critique. They suggested I add more interiority about my emotional experience, describe my ex-husband’s physicality when I confronted him, set the scene more fully for that conversation, and up the tension because it seemed like I handled the whole thing really well, too well to ring true.
Eventually the writing group facilitator asked if there were any final comments before we moved on to the next writer, and a man raised his hand. He was one of the newcomers, and he and his wife had introduced themselves as retired physicians who wanted to write books about their careers in medicine.
“I feel like I have to speak up for the husband,” he began.