Ann Arbor Area Writers Group

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After the reading, more discussion ensued. A bearded man in a wool vest had concerns about some of the physical probabilities in a story about a woman being kidnapped. "How can she flail her legs if she's standing up?" he asked.

"Oh, he's just taking a chance for a grope," one woman responded flippantly, referring to the kidnapper. "Men do that all the time."

"No, he's not trying to grope," the bearded man insisted, still looking at the paper. But no one was listening. The group caught a giddy wave and joked about groping until he patiently redirected them back to the work at hand. They made their notes, signed the copies, and gave them back to the writer.

On the night I attended, the writing was surprisingly strong, presumably because of the effectiveness of the feedback-edit-resubmit process. Everything read that night had already gone through revisions based on previous feedback. Strong writing is just raw material worked to death — edited until it's complete.

This is a group for writers willing to self-edit. Each submission left me wishing I could read more. I'll be going back.