Weinberg senior Kristen Jones named Twice, a Northwestern student writing group, after the words of author Anais Nin: “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.”
“Any good writing needs to be written and revised, so that is a duality,” Jones said.
Though she was not admitted to NU’s Writing Program, Jones was determined to continue her writing and found that there were many other students in her position.
“There’s so many people who want to write,” Jones said. “We need to give them somewhere to go.”
Jones created Twice in February 2005. The group of undergraduates seeks to gather student writers from various genres. At semimonthly meetings, members help each other improve through peer critiques.
“All writers can help each other by reading each other’s work and helping with editing,” Jones said.
There are roughly 16 official members of the group, but “membership is loosely defined,” said Jones.
“The group has about eight to 10 regulars,” she said.
The group meets in Crowe Cafe one Sunday and one Thursday a month and is always open to new members. At the beginning of each quarter, writers sign up for the meeting at which they would like to be critiqued and then must e-mail their stories to the group mailing list the week before that date.
According to Jones, the meetings begin with a brief writing prompt and then jump right into critiques. The meetings usually last about an hour. Depending on the day, poems, short stories or narrative nonfiction may be discussed.
Medill freshman Bethany Marzewski joined Twice this fall after attending a new member meeting.
“It’s a great experience because I haven’t been able to take a lot of writing classes,” Marzewski said.
Marzewski plans to apply for NU’s Writing Program next spring and has found the meetings to be “a really good way to get new perspective.”
“These are things I would have learned in the classes, so I feel like I have an advantage,”she said.
Freshman members such as Marzewski are essential to the group’s continued success because Jones will graduate this spring. Jones remains confident that the group will continue and has created an executive board of three to run the meetings next year.
In terms of criticism, each member usually says one positive and one negative comment about the piece, but as a writer, Jones is more interested in the constructive criticism.
“Nobody wants to hear ‘It’s good,'” Jones said. “You know, it’s nice, but it doesn’t help you make it better.”
Reach Maureen Rohn at [email protected].
