by Pat Merewether

Created on: January 06, 2009   Last Updated: August 11, 2010

I belonged to a writers group for a number of years and every summer about twenty of us went on a weekend retreat to write and enjoy each others' company.

Some of us were poets and others wrote fiction.  We'd write in our rooms during the day and meet in the evenings to read our work aloud and ask for constructive criticism. A friend of mine, Susan, was working on a romance novel that involved a woman who'd had a baby out of wedlock, a popular theme back then. She was a good writer and we were all quite involved in her plot and characters. So, when she read a scene where the fictional babied died, some of members were horrified.  One of our poets wrote a scathing ode to valiant single mothers, in protest.  At the same time, another member of the group had written a very long poem about the Donner party. I won't even try to explain that one, but as most of us know that party did not end happily and involved starvation and rumors cannibalism.

The mood was turning ugly, so we decided it was time for a dinner break.  Every year we reserved small side room in an upscale restaurant for the last night of our retreat. We were a little surprised when we arrived to find out that the person who'd made the reservations had made it for the "Donnor, party of eighteen." as a nod toward our fellow members poem. Writer's can have a rather macabre sense of humor.

During the meal the subject of Susan's unexpected plot twist started up again. Some folks saw it as a cop-out and others as simply unforgivable.  Nobody was happy, but Susan said it would make a stronger plot line at the end of the novel.   As you can imagine, this lead to a rather heated discussion and several people expressed, rather vehemently, that she shouldn't 'kill off the baby' and she became incensed and said, 'Well Mike not only killed off a bunch of people in his poem, but they ate the dead bodies!'

Finally, the waiter, who I was sure was the same as the one in Ferris Beuller's Day Off,  came into our little room and asked us if  everything was all right?" At first we were a little confused as we were having a great time and felt perfectly all right. Then we realized what our conversation must have sounded like, not only to the waiter, but to the people in the main dining room. Looking back on it, I'm surprised we didn't all end up in the newspaper wearing head coats.

We explained to him that we were writers and discussing our work and that nobody was killing or eating anyone in real life. He nodded, but didn't seem entirely convinced. We left him a large trip, and the following year we went to a different restaurant, in another town. We also kept our voices down and our conversation a little less controversial, at least in public.

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