Aspiring writers find their muse at local club

AMMAN — With a penchant for writing, a young Jordanian woman has come to the aid of aspiring writers who struggle to get their works published.

Dalia Shurman, former member of the Riyadh Writing Club, came to Amman and saw that there were no organised writing communities to join in the Kingdom, especially in Amman, which is what inspired her to start the Amman Writing Club (AWC) in 2017.

The AWC is affiliated with writing clubs in Riyadh, Jeddah and Kuwait, Shurman, who studied English Language and Literature at the University of Jordan, told The Jordan Times. 

"When I was a student, I also had a full-time job, but I just was not passionate about it, I wanted to do something related to my major, so I started the writing club to gather local writers and see how things go from there," Shurman said.

The idea of the AWC is to give members a prompt to write about and, every month, they gather to showcase their writing, which opens room for discussion and instant feedback. 

"Meetings usually last three hours on average, because the community is growing. In the beginning we had very few members but now I can barely find venues to fit the attendees, so I am working on finding a permanent one to host us," Shurman said.

The club is not restricted to the English language or a certain type of writing, but most members are focused on English and Arabic, and they write about the subject or prompt through poems, songs or short stories.

Attendance is free of charge for all members, but there are rules to be followed and adhered to; members need to attend the monthly meetings, if three of which are missed, the members can no longer attend, unless the absence was due to an emergency or special situation. Members are not allowed to plagiarise, and they must adhere to grammar rules in whatever language they choose to write in. 

"You can enter the blog, search for the writer and find their particular pieces to browse and sift through," she said. 

One of the members, who preferred to be mentioned by his penname, Jester, said that before he became a member, he went to one of the AWC's poetry slam events, and without him knowing, his friend had signed him up to go up on stage and perform. 

Jester was not writing a lot back then, and after the event and his performance he gained confidence and joined the writing club. 

"The main thing that makes the writing club and the poetry slams special is that they are unique, you do not find such stuff in Jordan," Jester said, noting that there are communities for music, visual arts and sports for example, but "there were no communities dedicated to writing". 

Jester said: "That little rush you get on stage from the 60 or 70 people in front of you sitting and listening to every word you say, that just feels amazing, you cannot replicate it, you cannot feel it anywhere else."

Commenting on the poetry slam events, Shurman said that there are therapists who attend and even perform, and "it gets emotional so they cry, which feels strange because people go to therapists to cry not the other way around. There are lawyers, therapists, schoolchildren and many others in the club, and everybody is a writer."

Therefore, the club forces members to shed all titles and formalities, in there, she said, they only writers. 

For his part, Hashem Assad, a 29-year-old researcher, writer and content creator, told The Jordan Times that he found a post by Shurman on a Facebook group inviting people to join the very first sessions held in 2017, and so he went.  

"The club has given me a sort of discipline or structure to follow, where I just sit and write. I had a blog before joining, but I was not dedicated to writing on it, after joining, I became more organised and encouraged to write more often," he said. 

Eventually, he was approached by a website called "Social Science Space", which asked him to write an article for them related to the subject of careers because of a piece he had already submitted to the club. 

Areej Ahmad grew up abroad and studied English Language and Literature at Yarmouk University and did her MA in Translation there before finding the club. She is currently a co-owner and founder of a TV subtitling company that works with Netflix. 

"I learned about the Amman Writing Club from two of my friends, so I attended one of the meetings to figure out what it was like," Ahmad said, noting that she is 10 years older than most members in the club, and yet it provided her with a safe space to discuss her ideas without fear. 

Nonetheless, she said the AWC is a place where the members are supportive when she tackles issues that are usually not discussed. 

"I look forward to seeing how different people visualise the same prompt, which is usually one word, but they come up with such different ideas and different concepts that mix with the people in the club, and I really enjoy that," she said, noting that the younger generation she sits with helped her challenge herself and write in different ways. 

"I am not yet published, I would love to be one day, and Dalia is working very hard to help us reach that goal, so I look forward to what she has in store for us."