Time to Re-Group: A Personal Reflection by Jane Clamp

This is the last ACW blog I’ll be writing within my role as Groups’ Coordinator, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to look back and reflect.

image copyright blogspot.com

I joined ACW in the Autumn of 2013. I’d been on my first ever writing course and met, among others, Angela and Sarah Hobday. Their encouragement and friendship were immediate and powerful and, as soon as I got home, I filled in that membership form and pinned my colours to the mast. I had become a writer and I wanted to be where other writers were.

I joined Angela’s writing group in West Norfolk and would drive back from those meetings with my heart pounding and my head whirring, filled with excitement about this new passion in my life. At that stage I was barely writing anything, other than copious short pieces all entitled with variations of ‘I don’t know what to write.’ The few of us that gathered month by month became firm friends and staunch allies.

When Sarah decided to step down as Groups’ Coordinator in 2016, I didn’t hesitate in accepting the offer to succeed her. (By now, Angela had become Chair of ACW and I had taken over the leadership of Brecks, Fens and Pens, which was growing rapidly.) I knew only too well the essential role the group was playing in my own writing world, and was more than happy to encourage other members to get connected with local Christian writers.

It’s often said how solitary the writer’s life can be. The hours spent honing our WIPs often take place behind a closed door and, when we emerge, it may be with the sense that our output has to remain private, for now at least. Being part of a writers’ group breaks all of that down. Everyone in the room understands the pressures you are facing: to meet deadlines, stare down personal demons, overcome perfectionism, press through fear, doubt and rejection. Only fellow writers really understand what all that feels like. For the duration of that meeting, you can feel normal, as well as accepted.

Pressures of time mean that I am stepping down from serving on the Committee, but I shall continue to prioritise leading my local group. I truly would not be the writer I am today without them.

In closing, I heartily commend my successor, Richard Palmer, to you; and encourage all of you to get involved with other writers – informally or as part of a group. We need each other!

See you next month – without this particular hat on….

Jane Clamp is the outgoing (see what I did there?!) Groups' Coordinator for ACW and author of Too Soon, a mother's journey through miscarriage (SPCK)