Better

At least I wasn't the only one there.

Four people were sitting at tables in the meeting room of the Ruth E. Dickenson branch of the Ottawa Public Library by the time I arrived. Even though I was a couple of minutes early, they were already busy at work on laptops.

One of the organizers greeted me and offered me a word BINGO card: each of the tiles had writing prompts and their own themes—nature and tech. I could use the tiles as inspiration for writing. If I could make a BINGO line, I could earn a charm.

I'm a star!

Oh yeah: I was also offered a string and a charm that indicated my first visit to the Capital Region Writers group. For each subsequent visit, I can earn another charm.

Cute.

There wasn't much to the group, and in a way, that was good. We started out with a sprint, in which we had 15 minutes to write anything: we could write something new or continue with an existing project. At the end of the 15 minutes, we could count how many words we had written and even offer to share our words with the group.

Nobody offered to read and Kaitlyn was the only one to report that she had written 311 words in that time frame.

I took the time to continue polishing Dark Water. I'm at a stage where I'm cutting more words than adding new ones so I didn't want to say how many words I had cut or written in that time frame.

A few more people joined the group but we all shared space in which to write (I actually wrote this post while sitting in the room). There were few distractions, although one person banged on their keyboard like they were getting out aggression, while all the time muttering out loud.

I could see why almost everyone in the group was wearing headphones.

Though the group meets from 6:00 to 8:30, I wrapped up shortly after 8—as soon as I was done writing this post. I haven't yet decided if I'll attend the next meeting, which is this Thursday, November 13, but I did join their Discord group.

I think this group is better suited for me than the other groups I've visited: indeed, this meeting was held at the same time as the writing group in Kanata, but I chose this one because I hadn't been yet and wanted to see how it compared. And I think I'll choose this group simply because it's closer to home.

There's also the Capital Crime Writers group, which I'm going to check out on Wednesday. Stay tuned.

I don't know if writing groups are for me or if I prefer to just work alone, but one thing is for sure and is a bonus: in a group, I don't get distracted. I don't surf social media or watch YouTube videos. I get right down to writing.

And that might just be enough to bring me back. With noise-cancelling headphones.