How a Creative Course Introduced me to ‘My Tribe’
After I had a baby, I was really lonely.
My partner and I had moved cities and all my family and old friends lived miles away. My new ‘baby group’ friends were nice, but I hardly knew them. And they only ever wanted to talk about, yes you guessed it, babies. I loved my baby. He was the best thing in the world. And the other baby group babies were fine too. But babies have their limitations. They can’t discuss books. And nor could their mothers. Or they didn’t want to. Oh dear. So, me wanting to discuss books, or literature generally or writing, in particular, was doomed to fail.
It was then I realised I needed to join a writing group. The trouble was all the writing groups were miles away from where we lived, and we didn’t have a car. Then I had what I thought might be a good idea. I could do an online writing course! Now an online writing course doesn’t necessarily make you friends, but it does mean you can write stuff and get feedback and that’s what I really craved. It’s all about the feedback man, as some musicians will tell you.
The only fiction course I could find that looked interesting was an online University one. It wasn’t cheap, and I was quite poor, but you could pay in stages so I could just about manage it. The course actually included some seminar time too at a local school with a tutor and other people on the course. And that turned out to be really positive. They were all ages, mostly women but a few men too, and all had different experiences of writing fiction. I wouldn’t say they all became my friends, but some of them I really connected with. I realised that this was what I’d been needing. People who genuinely liked writing. People who saw it as an important, useful, absolutely necessary thing to do with your life. These were My Tribe, My Clan, My People!
Baby was looked after by my partner when I went to these meetings. At home, I felt able to write when baby was asleep or playing on the bed next to me. It was a strange, magical time that a slightly older child might have found more difficult as they would have needed more attention. I passed the course and ended up doing a second degree online in English Literature and Creative Writing with that University. Along with going back to work part time.
Doing that first creative writing course reminded me of who I was beyond being a rather friendless new mum in a new city. I was a writer (in hiding it felt). It gave me more confidence and I did end up meeting other writers and making new friends because of it. More of my tribe.
