It is a truth universally acknowledged that an aspiring author must be in want of time to write. Six Hillsdale students have banded together to solve that problem with Writers’ Block, a creative writing group.

Junior Rooks Russell, who started the group last school year, said he wanted a space where writers could encourage each other.

“For the most part, writing is a pretty solitary task,” he said. “I wanted to have a community where people could do the work alongside each other.”

Russell said he began writing in earnest during his junior and senior years of high school.

“It was actually during COVID-19 where I sat down with all the free time I had and wrote my first full manuscript,” he said. 

Russell proceeded to write nine manuscripts before graduation. Most of his work is in the young adult genre, which is for readers 12 to 18 years old. 

“There’s a lot of important messages that they need to hear,” Russell said. “Creative writing is for the purpose of truth, and they’re about the age where they need to be hearing good truths.”

Russell said he is currently working on polishing older drafts while working on new ones. 

“I’m working to submit them to agents for publishing,” he said. “The publishing industry is wild and crazy and terribly difficult to get into, but I’m working on it slowly.”

The students meet every Saturday morning from 10-11:15 a.m. in the Fishbowl room of the Mossey Library. The first hour is dedicated to writing, followed by 15 minutes for writers to share their progress and discuss potential difficulties.

“Writers’ Block is really just a writing accountability group,” said sophomore Autumn Visser, one of the group’s first members. “The thought is that if you plan to do something, it becomes part of your schedule and you can make time for it.”

“Writer’s block” is a term describing a mental block where a writer can’t generate new ideas for a story, but the group’s name presents a solution as well as a problem.

“It’s a wordplay,” Visser said. “It’s the block that belongs to writers. It’s the place where you go, like a street corner where we need to write.”

Visser said she first became interested in writing in fifth grade after reading “The Lord of the Rings” for the first time. 

“All through high school, writing was my main hobby,” she said. 

Her first completed series was a science fiction trilogy, and she is currently working on two fantasy novels.

Visser said she believes creative writing is important because of the way it lets authors communicate truth.

 “If we try to just state the truth a lot of the time it comes off as being trite or as something that’s been said the same way too many times,” she said. “It’s a lot easier to show through an image or a short story or a novel.”

She said she believes that is why Jesus spoke in parables.

 “A perceptive mind will be able to see the truth in a piece in a piece of fiction where it might reject something that is simply stated,” she said.

Sophomore Erika Kyba joined Writers’ Block during the 2023 spring semester because of a poster she saw in her dorm. 

“What was really attractive to me about the idea was just that it was a place where you can just carve out time and write,” she said. “It can be hard to find time for that in the midst of a busy schedule.”

Kyba said she likes the community that has developed in the group. 

“You get to know the other writers there, and you get to know their projects too,” she said.

She also said she appreciates the debriefing session at the end of each meeting. 

“At first I was kind of nervous about sharing,” she said. “But as I got more comfortable with the group, I got to the point where I felt like I could ask people for advice. And that was really, really helpful for me.”

Although most members are writing novels, the group welcomes authors of all interests and experiences. 

“To hear that from other writers, especially who are more experienced, opens your eyes to new possibilities,” Kyba said.

The group started with three members at its initial meeting at the end of the 2022 fall semester. It now has six consistent members and is still looking to grow.

“Don’t feel like you have to be at a certain place in your writing journey,” Kyba said. “It’s really just a time where you can just be with other writers.”

Russell encouraged any interested writer to come. 

“It’s for other writers to feel like they’re not the only one out there just typing away on a laptop,” he said. “They can come and be surrounded by other people who are working, like they are, to write a story.”