“What started as a group of strangers became one of my most cherished group of friends.”
— Michael Montoya
After meeting through a Write Around Portland Prompt writing group, a group of writers are continuing to build respect, writing and community seven years later!
Michael, quoted above, has since become a Write Around Portland facilitator and even joined the Board of Directors. Several of his writing friends, who are also now Write Around Portland workshop facilitators, took the time to reflect on how their group came together and what it means to them:
Our group has been a real touchstone for me these past seven years. Writing with this group has helped me through periods of incredible stress including working as a health policy advisor to Gov. Kate Brown during COVID. Writing with Michael, Grace, Sophie, and Tracy, has been an opportunity to step out of the stress of daily life and into a place where I can use my imagination and come up with stories that I didn’t know I had inside me. Seven years on, I’m still working with characters who started out of a Prompt exercise when the person sitting next to me handed me a list of things you might find in a bag; among them a snubbed nose revolver and a faded photograph.
What started as a way to spend 10 weeks in a room at Powell’s with strangers has turned into a deep and abiding friendship with the small group of us who have been meeting monthly since 2018. We have meaningful conversations filled with vulnerability as well as laughter. I’m grateful for all the stories we’ve shared with each other and that they are a part of my life’s story.
Jackie Yerby
In a world where I’m expected to “use AI as a thought partner”, where many of the things I write are subjected to countless rounds of review by committee, Prompt has always been a balm. There are times when I’m so frazzled and distracted I can barely string a few sentences together, but always…the community, the fellowship, the very human love and support. I am so grateful for this group and the people who comprise it – people who I’ve referred to more than once as my smartest friends. They inspire me to be better, to do better. I feel so lucky to have found them.
Tracy McDannel Forsyth
In 2018, I walked into that room in Powell’s very unsure of what to expect. I had nervously signed up for Prompt, challenging myself to try something new. Up until that point, I confined my creative writing to my journals and only occasionally shared with others.
A change happened somewhere in those weeks together – the safety created by coming together for a common purpose. We didn’t know each other’s last names, what we did for work, who our families or friends were. We did know we liked writing and wanted to explore it more deeply and in community with others.
By the end of Prompt, I didn’t feel ready to say goodbye to the folks I had been intimately writing with for several weeks. So, some of us continued on. First our times together closely mimicked that of Prompt, but as time went on, we got to know each other through our writing – the ups and downs of our lives, the triumphs and struggles. Over the years it has all evolved. About half our time is spent checking in and the other half writing.
This group has seen me through breakups and the development of new relationships. They walked with me through law school and the start of a new career. They hold a mirror up to reflect back to me what shows up in myself underneath the writing. They encourage my deep questioning and hold space for my uncertainty. During the times when I have felt so disconnected from myself, they remind me of who I truly am. Simply put, they ground me. And it is all done through writing. I never would have thought we would still be writing together 7 years on.
We try to meet about once a month for an hour and a half or two hours. Three of us have gone through facilitation training with Write Around so we rotate who facilitates. Before the pandemic, we met in-person, and since the pandemic, we mostly meet virtually. Sometimes, all five of us show up and sometimes there’s only two or three. We use prompts, share out, and provide feedback. It is a beautiful space and so needed in the chaos and hardness of these times.
Grace Badik
On a cold wet January evening, I arrived at our first meeting at Powell’s. Fifteen strangers, young, old, black, white, Asian, Latinx, straight, queer, it just didn’t matter. Something even more difficult, and important, was unfolding. “Respect, writing, and community.” We were given our prompts, did our timed writing, shared it or not, got feedback or not. We laughed, we cried, we cringed, but we revered what was shared. This is so Portland!! I loved it.
Michael Montoya
For the past 7 years, we have met to write and to witness life. People left; one member tragically died. We met through illnesses, surgeries, new relationships and deaths. Through ridiculous new jobs, impossible schedules, through a pandemic, through heat waves and ice storms, we kept writing, together. What started as a group of strangers became one of my most cherished group of friends. The intention of Prompt, the gradual unfolding of intimacies, the emphasis on the writing and not the writer, has led to a practice of community, almost sacred in its simplicity. Powerful in its practice.
We are now 5 writers and friends. We care about our writing; we care about each other. We learn about showing up, about accompanying another, about persevering through the harshest of circumstance and about celebrating the small things. Month after month, year after year, our lives and our writing unfold.
Writing with my group is therapeutic. I find myself writing about things I never before have shared, sometimes having not made the connections myself. That’s what safe spaces can do. We are not exceptional people. But we are real, with each other and in our writing. Even when the prompt invites fiction and fancy. Our time together reveals otherwise. We see each other. We encourage each other, we care for one another, through our writing, our banter, our checking in. Our group enacts the kind of world I want to cocreate: One I wish all people could have. “Respect, writing, and community,” indeed.
As Michael mentioned, we lost a member of our group – that was in 2020. And so, I’d like to dedicate this write to Rob as we approach the fifth anniversary of his death.
What do covert ops, god manifested in human form on earth, an ill-advised tattoo in South America, potassium broth and transcendent nature all have in common? Well perhaps many things but in this particular example, the answer is “our group”. What started as a blank page is now a shared history. We are conspirators in a project of trying something new. Yes, it’s still new, each time. What a surprise. What a well-spring of surprise, each time: the new insights from old friends.
Sophie Castro-Davis