Xenomancy

 

I was in a rather large village with a friend yesterday and we went to one of the pubs there. There we met Geoff. Geoff had established a writers' group in a long narrow back room.

It turned out to be more of a drop in session rather than a workshop or a critique group. A place where writers simply met and chatted, or so it seemed. Geoff (I didn't catch his last name) seemed to be simply a facilitator and the meeting he presided over had no rules.

After the previous day’s experience at the swimming pool the thought of ‘no rules’ cheered me up immensely.

It was a very odd affair.

My friend and I were the first to arrive.

My friend gave her name and shook his hand.

Then he turned to me and I gave him my name and shook his hand.

“And you are?” Geoff asked leaning towards me.

I was flummoxed. I did not know what else to say. what more I could add. I’d already told him my name and felt awkward about saying it twice.

I had the sensation I was in a damp, dark cave and up against the wall.

“Er… I’m just me.” I said, Hoping that I’d given the right answer.

My friend, long practiced in the art of explaining herself to the hard of hearing took, control of the situation and gave my name; while was still mediating  that the syllables of my name must sound like, “Pleased to meet you,” to the deaf.

After that initial embarrassment, Geoff then talked to us very enthusiastically about an agreement he had obtained with Orchard Press to publish books from the group. He talked very enthusiastically to us about this project and we were so very impressed until…

…unhappily for Geoff, a group of people then arrived. They were in despair. They wanted to know when they were going to see their finished books. It seemed the publisher was dragging his feet and that nothing was actually happening after over a year of waiting.

When we asked one of these complainants about her book she retorted that she had actually set them seven!

She then showed us a magazine article featuring her books and pictures of the already prepared hard covers. They were children’s books, illustrated by another person in the group. The meeting then threatened to turn quite nasty with vociferous protests from all involved.

However, Geoff remained unruffled by all this.

He is an elderly man, who simply flipped away their protests by talking about his grandson or by flirting with the children’s story writer once her husband had left the room to buy drinks.

Whilst all the bitter arguments were going on, the woman next to me  handed out fliers for her upcoming book reading. She was an author who had not gone down Geoff’s ‘publishing’ route, but had instead simply sent out extracts of her manuscript to twenty publishers. She hadn’t written short stories first. She hadn’t written for magazines. She hadn’t got an agent. She had simply sent her work out to seven publishers at a time choosing the ones she thought would be most interested in her work.

She told me that she didn’t actually have any ambition to be a writer. She had simply had an idea, had written her book and had then sent it off …and then she had got it published! On the twentieth attempt!

What joy!

I later learn of xenomancy: divination using strangers. So I resolved to learn from the unflappable, calm and unruffled Geoff , man who faced down a storm of protest and remained untroubled; and the author who took a different route, but persevered and got there in the end without using the word ‘rejection’ in her conversation once.

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