If someone is a member of fifty activity groups, the chances of him or her coming to a writers’ workshop and sitting still long enough to write a story are pretty slim.
The writers’ group I founded in Abu Dhabi back in June 2015 now has 1,952 members. A group of these writer-members meets weekly, and out of around sixteen who sign up on the Meetup site for our free workshop sessions, usually about eight turn up to take their places in the café where we meet. What happens each week to the other eight, one can only guess. One assumes they were abducted on their way to the workshop. Sometimes we never ever hear from them again.
Many of our would-be attendees have plenty to say for themselves. Some send messages to say that they ‘really want to come’ to our workshop, and ‘definitely intend to come,’ but they are ‘just so busy at the moment.’ Well, with those fifty other groups to attend, they would be, wouldn’t they?
Some say they would indeed come if I could only move the group into the centre of town, or if I could change the meeting time, or if I could shift the day of meeting. Of course, call their bluff and change the location and the timings, and not only do those people not show up, but they vanish from the face of the earth. This is why we now refer to them as… ghost writers.
I sometimes wonder if analyzing the nature of the other groups chosen by these writers would give me a profile of the type of people who sign up for a writers’ group that they most likely won’t attend. Meetups much loved by our ghost writers include: the Abu Dhabi Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Meetup, the Abu Dhabi Agile Scrum Exchange, The Abu Dhabi Bucket Listers, The Abu Dhabi Corniche Boot Camp, The Abu Dhabi Dance Lessons Meetup, the Abu Dhabi Civil Engineering Meetup, and the Abu Dhabi Meditation group.
I like to keep an open mind. Many of our best writers have come not from the English departments of schools and universities, but from oil companies and IT departments. I also tell myself that I should be very happy when those who are expected do not show up. It must mean that the group has served its purpose of giving them a sense of community and motivation and, as a result, they are comfortably ensconced at their desks hammering out the ideas that will make up the next chapter of their book.
I mean… they won’t be in a shopping mall or at the cinema, will they?
All Write 