(The Bar Room Writers Offensive happens this Saturday at Barca at 7 pm. The reading is free.)

You can convince a writer to do many things, but you can't convince a writer to write. Writers, in fact, will go to great lengths in order to not write. The best you can do is give them a deadline and hope that everything works out. The Bar Room Writers Offensive began in 2009 as a quarterly reading series from four local writers "as a way to force us to write," Dave Johnston explained to me. "Once you ask people to show up, you have to have something to show them." Eric Greenwalt is a little more colorful about deadline pressures, explaining that a few days before the next Bar Room Writers Offensive, he suddenly realizes: "Holy fuck, I gotta fucking finish this story!"

The first Bar Room Writers Offensive happened on the balcony at Barca, where the readings still happen today. Unlike other reading series, it's the same four authors every time—Greenwalt and Johnston read with authors Mortimur K and Christien Storm—and that repetition gives the four authors a rock-band vibe, allowing them to develop their skills together. "I think as a group, everybody’s writing has just gotten clearer," Greenwalt says. Johnston adds, "We’ve had readings where I’ve listened to stories from the other three and I realize I have to do better next time."

It took a while for the Bar Room Writers Offensive to develop its voice. For the very first show, Johnston hired a magician to host. He turned out to be lacking in certain skills: "The problem is that he had never done tricks in the dark before," Johnston explains. In addition, he was performing in front of a wall of mirrors that ruined some of his tricks for the audience. Johnston sounds contrite: "We basically just set up a magician for utter failure." Since then, local author Doug Nufer has hosted the Offensive. One time, he dressed as a park ranger and treated everyone in the room as though they were about to go on a long expedition into the wilderness. Another time, Nufer read the text from coupons he found in the Val-Pak that arrived with that day's mail between acts. ("Talk about running up against a deadline," Greenwalt says.) The Offensive has experimented with the framework of reading performance in many different ways. One time, the four readers read each others' work. Another time, for the reading themed "A Voice from Above," the readers stood on the edge of the balcony and read down to the audience, with what Greenwalt describes as "a lot of finger-pointing."

I ask Johnston and Greenwalt to describe what unique talents everyone brings to the reading series. Mortimur K was described as the "cannibal expert"—author of "happy uplifting stories about horrible, horrible things." Johnston says Greenwalt "started out writing noirish, dark stories," but now he's moving more into autobiography. "I think you're getting funnier," he says to Greenwalt, who replies, "or your callouses are getting thicker." According to Greenwalt, Christian Storm "started out reading a lot of really good poetry" with "excellent pacing," but she's been venturing into "a lot of autobiographical stories that are just fucking gorgeous." "I think I'm the clown one at the end," Johnston says. The Offensive, according to a surprised-sounding Johnston, has gotten a lot better as it's gone along: "the literary voice has just become a lot clearer." And audiences are still showing up for the Offensive, something he attributes to "our writing style," the group's willingness to "fuck up and do something really bad" in the name of ambition, and the booze. Johnston quotes Greenwalt's motto for the reading: "'The more you drink, the better we sound.' I think that just about covers it."