Colleen O’Doherty found community at Chicago Filmmakers

Albert Camus once declared, “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” It’s a tall order, but one perhaps made easier with a community both to support you and to come together in executing such an arduous task. This kind of camaraderie might be found at the monthly Queer Writers Club, a project of both Chicago Filmmakers and Reeling: The Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival, hosted by Colleen O’Doherty.

I was stunned to hear that O’Doherty had only moved to Chicago somewhat recently, considering how ingrained she’s become in the community vis-à-vis a successful, ongoing creative program. She has an attitude about getting involved that is inspiring, especially in these times when we may not only feel isolated but actually drawn toward isolation, in the process forsaking a sense of community. Now she helps to facilitate a space where it can be found, perhaps helping to keep civilization from destroying itself, one writing prompt at a time.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I moved to Chicago from Nebraska about two years ago, and part of why I moved here was wanting to get more involved in theater and film and burlesque and all these different art things I enjoy. One of the first things I did was try and find places I could volunteer at. I dunno if that’s a midwest thing—I was just like, if I help out at things, I’ll meet people, you know?

So I reached out to a bunch of places, and Chicago Filmmakers pretty immediately got back [to me] and was like, “Hey, we have this LGBT film festival, Reeling, and we always need help for it. Like, jump in on that.” And I did, and I just kind of immediately fell in love with Chicago Filmmakers as a whole, because everyone was really welcoming.

Everyone was just super nice. I loved what they were doing. Then I kind of ended up making friends with [someone on the board], but anyway, she reached out and was like, “Hey, you know, we’ve kind of wanted to create some sort of writing group, and that seems to be your background. Do you have any ideas?” And I was like, “We could do a writing club or a group or something.” So, over the course of time, Queer Writers Club came into being, and I’ve been running it, like—gosh, has it been almost two years? Wow. It’s getting up there. The Queer Writers Club went from an infant to . . . I think she might be walking.

I’d say there’s a decent amount of [Queer Writers Club attendees] that are certainly interested in the film world in some way, which makes sense. I mean, again, if you notice in the name Queer Writers Club, it’s not filmmaking per se. But that is natural [to assume that], because it’s under the umbrella of Chicago Filmmakers.

[At the meetings,] we keep it pretty informal; also, we’ve played with the format and the structure at various points. What we’re settled into—I think what it’s gonna keep being—is, basically, people show up, and I do some icebreaker kind of intros, and then we just do a bunch of writing prompts, and people write and share and talk about writing.

I’m sure every writing teacher is different, but I almost treat it like an exercise session. You have a warm-up, a main thing, a cooldown kind of thing. So for a warm-up prompt, I’ll do something very straightforward, like word association or something like that. There’s all these keep-the-pen-moving exercises you can do. So I’m gonna say a word every minute or every two minutes—write what comes to mind for that. And then you can incorporate the next word or move on to something else. You know, something like that, that just kinda gets the pen moving, so to speak. And then I love a good multistep how-the-heck-am-I-supposed-to-incorporate-these-things kind of prompt.

I’ve also sometimes done more film-based or screenwriting-based things. Like, you know, I’ll give a bunch of images and a song and all this stuff, and be like, “OK, taking all this together, what kind of movie would incorporate these things, and pitch that movie.” So we do some fun stuff like that.

One of the alumni from Reeling, he had a really beautiful short film a couple years ago. His name’s Austin Bunn, and he is going to be a guest facilitator for this upcoming [Queer Writers Club meeting], which will be November 23. I’m very excited for that. He’s a wonderful artist and teacher.

We finally had our first in-person [meeting] last month. Several people showed up and have maintained friendships. I’m in a group chat that I more observe than jump in on, but everyone, you know, they’re going to movies and stuff. So I think some friendships have come out of it for some folks.

I think we’re gonna move into a hybrid-type model. We’re heading into winter—it’s gonna make more sense to do some of those online. But then, certainly, I think we’re trying to at least maybe quarterly [meet] in person. Online has the benefit of just being more accessible for folks. That’s certainly something that’s always [in the] front of my mind, too, is [that] with Zoom, you can put up captions, and if they have mobility issues, they can just jump in. I think we talked about wanting to keep some sort of online version, but I think there was a hunger for—an interest in—in-person connection.

I guess the only long-term goal I have is to maybe figure out a sustainable structure. It being a volunteer ragtag kind of setup is fun, and [it] works right now. But I think giving it a little more structure and a little more of a setup . . . As [Chicago Filmmakers moves] forward, do we make this the baby of a program manager? I don’t know what that looks like, but giving it a little more of that stability would be great. But then as far as the space, [we’re] just kind of figuring out what programming or what approach works best for folks.

Queer Writers Club
Monthly; Sat 11/23, 2–4 PM, virtual, free
chicagofilmmakers.org/upcoming-screenings-and-events/queerwritersclub

I feel like you’re gonna have two components going forward with times of great political upheaval or political crisis like this, where, you know, we’re very realistically looking at some infringements on rights and all these things coming down the pipe. There is kind of an emotive personal element, and I think there is a little more of what I would consider the intellectual political element. How are people going to respond? That work is going to be vital and important and central, but people need spaces where they can also just be processing feelings and just be fully human and have other people that are like, “Yeah, I know, I’m going through this,” or, “I’m scared about this.”

And so I think in that way, community spaces enable people to embrace their mantle as a citizen, by allowing them to first kind of take care, like put their oxygen mask on to then go in to do whatever they need to do. 

We’re a sharing-writing-space type. I don’t necessarily wanna make that the space where I’m trying to engage something openly, politically. Again, though, it’s a very free space in terms of what people wanna write about and what people wanna say. I mean, everything’s political, but there’s no agenda, there’s no political agenda I certainly ever go in with, ’cause I don’t think that’s conducive to people being able to just use the spaces they want
to creatively.