Writer's Group

For those who get interested in the minutia, I thought I'd update you on my relationship with a writer's group. In my original post on the subject I was uncertain that I'd stick with it, but the proof being in the pudding, here I am celebrating my six-month anniversary. It helps that the group is both impressively accomplished and welcoming. The feedback is always fair and helpful. Thanks to the group I've now finished thirteen sections of my novel.
The greatest benefit has been the schedule. I know that I need three to four pages double spaced, to justify my butt in the seat each week, so I've given myself scheduled time to work on those pages. I'd read in Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird and Norman Mailer's The Spooky Art that when you set aside scheduled time that you form a contract with your subconscious. I thought that was nice, but not necessarily true. I was wrong. Each Friday as I head out for "Mommy's Writing Time," I find these ready-made ideas have all knit themselves together and are only in need of some vocabulary to pin them to paper. I usually have a decent first draft after three or four hours work, then I revise as time and ability allow over the rest of the week until Wednesday--my due date.
I wait in fear and trembling until Steve says, "Christine?" and then I pass out my baby for inspection. They occasionally find missing digits, but generally she's pronounced sound. The marked up copies they send me home with are tucked into my blue writer's desk to await the next day's editing session. Thursday I lay out all the pages in order and then go through each stack weighing the merits of each comment and grammatical correction--God bless the red pen contingent. I end up with a marked up copy that I take to Valiant and enter the corrections/revisions on the saved file, which is finally printed out, hole-punched and added to the notebook of the blessed.
The manuscript is beginning to add up to something, something like 10,000 words. This is both exciting and worrisome as I feel I've barely gotten this story started, and Albert says his books are generally finished by 90,000 words. I'm not sure the rest of this story will fit into 80,000 words, but War and Peace wouldn't have either. Not that my story is War and Peace, but it was nice of Tolstoy to provide us with an excuse to go long--at least on that first draft.
I can't express what a wonderful blessing the Writer's group has been to me. They give me enough confidence to value my work, so that I can move forward with the story. My draft may only be adequate, but adequate is good enough to get started. I needed external validation. Thanks guys, for putting up with Harriet and me week after week. We're both better for it.