First Sunday Q&A: Learning to Trust Your Writing Community
Q: I admit I’m a bit of a misfit and I’m sorry about it—sometimes. But my question for you is about my confused feelings about manifesting a nurturing creative community for myself. Maybe I don’t really appreciate the value of community in the arts and that’s the core problem? Past experience has mostly shown me that artists are super competitive by nature, often not that nice, because there is only so much to go around and there are a lot of us. Just look at how hard it is to get published today. But the bottom line is that writing is soooo lonely, and I am realizing that isolation doesn’t serve me.
Can you share any insights on how find an ideal community as a writer? But even more, how to trust that community and grow from it? What steps would you advise or have others taken to get over this leeriness? (Thank you. I love this newsletter, btw.)
A: Well, thanks for the kind words and for this honest question. I think many of us wonder about topics like competition and trust in the creative life, and I admire this writer for putting such strange and uncomfortable feelings into words.
Have you experienced that truly difficult place she’s talking about? I certainly have.
I think about this a lot, as a writer. Is it because we were trained (subtly or overtly) to be competitive in school? In school competition—in most competitions—some win, and many lose. I also think about the inclusive/exclusive, belong and not-belong, conundrum of those clubs and cliques we long to join and may not be able to. The cool group and the nerds, and all of those (me included) in between.
Where did we find a place to fit and feel good about ourselves? Who could we trust to accept us—and our creativity—exactly as it is?
I was listening to singer/songwriter Antje Duvoket this week. She has an older song, “Glamorous Girls,” which is about this very feeling and how, when we’re young, it hurts so much to be unaccepted, and how maybe we look back, years later, and realize we did ok to be on our own.
Do you have to be on your own?
But do you have to go it alone? I wonder. I think perhaps my personal creative spirit was given a boost by not fitting in, when I was young. My family definitely believed in me as a creative artist, but school was so far from a nurturing place for that. Misfit-hood was felt even more strongly in college, but I was never happier than in my art classes. A community that was full of people like me, everyone painted or wrote in isolation.
But were we really a community? Maybe we were just a holding place to learn skills and find our way. We certainly didn’t bond very often. It was accepted that your best work was done in silence, away from others.
It wasn’t until I found what I wanted to create, as I ventured out into the world with my creative expression—writing and art—that I felt a real need for community.
Gap between skill and taste
In the womb of creativity, when I was working alone, I competed mostly with myself—with my own skill levels. My process was whatever talent, skill, or ability I could muster, to translate my inner experiences and sense of the world to an outer canvas or page. Sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn’t, and I had to go back to hone those skills. My process at that level was judged by teachers and peers, but especially by me.
It was hard. Very common for artists or writers in training to feel they are far from their ideal, in terms of skill. (This classic video by Ira Glass on the gap between taste and ability is worth a re-watch.)
Learning is what we were here for, though. So we acknowledge the gap and try to lessen it with more learning.
Eventually, a product we create pleases us. Maybe it gets a teacher’s thumbs up or a peer’s. Maybe these small encouragements boost the next step: we take the risk of publication, sharing our writing with the world. That’s when we enter a new level of competition and the loneliness of no community gets even more pronounced.
I know that publication is the holy grail for most writers who are reaching for it. I’ve been there. I have to say, though, that once it’s achieved, once you have the agent and the contract, the story’s only just beginning. If you’re totally alone when that happens, if you don’t have your network of support, it’s much, much harder.
Why? Because even those who receive all the signs that the work is worthwhile aren’t convinced unless a community reflects it back. It takes hard work to venture out into the world with your creative efforts. It requires much effort to sustain the belief in self and keep going.
I believe—and it might just be me—that the solo creator, the one who stays in isolation, sees the other artist who wins an award or gets a movie deal and they feel more of a twinge. They may think, One less opportunity for me.
Stronger belief in self
Of course, this creates a vicious cycle: The fear these thoughts generate makes us less generous, less able to reach out and create a support network. Essentially, we back away from the very nurturing that could keep us going forward.
Since this has happened to me, and I learned the hard way about community, I think it’s helpful to do all we can to get a stronger belief in ourselves as creators before we risk publication or sharing our work. The stronger belief is hard to generate alone, though. You may be more able than I have been. But I’ve mostly found this via my carefully curated community.
With my community at my back, no matter the outer reflection by the world, I continue to believe not only in myself but in others. I cultivate generosity. I am able to sincerely wish others the best.
It was a long road to get there, though.
Reaching out
For two years, I was intrigued by a young writer in my MFA class. I was in my fifties when I went back to grad school for my MFA, and he was in his late twenties, perhaps. I watched how he moved through those two years of very hard work and tremendous output. When we both graduated, his debut already had both an agent and publisher, and not long after, the book got optioned for a movie.
My first reaction was predictable: I was jealous, and I wondered what made him special. Was it talent? There seemed to be something beyond talent that attracted such success.
I saw how easily he created a community around himself. Always with a group of people, always talking to teachers, unlike loner me. I imagined how comfortable he must have felt in his own skin at that young age to be so at ease with others. And he knew the value of community, not just for contacts and networking, although that is always a big part of such programs. He was generous at heart and he cared about other writers. This was evident in class.
How did someone create community? What benefits might it give me?
It’s never just about your work
I am not at ease in groups of people I don’t know, so it has always been hard for me to push forward and be recognized for myself, rather than my work. I want the recognition of my artistic work to be solely on the work’s merit.
In the real world of publishing today, in the hugely competitive art world, that is a sweet fantasy.
I’ve learned that a person’s work is more easily recognized only if they have a community to spread it wide. Because of who they know, the circles they move in, people begin to connect with the person’s artistic goals. It’s often personal, one to one, when that connection happens. People get excited about what you’re creating because they see you as a person, not a piece of work.
Or, if they are excited about your work, they want to know more about you as a person. One reason why podcasts are hugely popular and a great way for writers to get “known” by potential readers. I’m aware there’s a level of “you pat my back, I’ll pat yours” in this paradigm but I like to put the weight of my belief on the idea that reaching out, not going it alone, brings us people who can benefit from what we create.
is an excellent example of this approach, in my opinion. His mentorship has changed many a writer’s approach to marketing and sharing their work. Including mine.
It’s hard news to most writers who prefer isolation or who, like me in the past, have trouble trusting community with their precious work. What happens, though, when they hear from their publisher: Tell us everyone you know who might help spread the word. Who will help promote this book? Publishers know it’s about community. A book’s success depends on it.
But beyond commercial success, I find community creates the support you will need in the world when you do venture out.
Instead of working in isolation, doing my very best on the page or canvas, my job as a creative artist included reaching out. Finding those others, that community—before I needed them.
Creating your community
I began with classes. I deliberately cultivated a community for initial feedback, as a test.
I was very careful. Curation of that initial community is vital to its continuing benefit to the writer or artist. You don’t want just anyone in your circle. So many look for their first community at home—a family member, close friend, mentor at work—but if they aren’t experienced with feedback for your particular genre or art form, I’ve found it can hurt more than help.
So my way was to take writing classes and art workshops and look for others whose feedback I appreciated in class. I wanted those who had a generous spirit instead of a competitive one. It didn’t come fast or easy, but slowly I grew my tribe. Eventually I had both an in-person art critique group and two online writer’s groups. These carefully created communities were less about competition than appreciation for what we each created.
I learned how to be generous in my own comments, too. There’s a subtle power trip in critique that some love, and I divorced myself from them. Who needs the comment that is basically only to boost the ego of the person who shares it? I wanted feedback that opened doors. That made me feel worth as a creator, not shame.
Finding your tribe
I never knew how important it is to find your tribe, as a creative person. Or what a tribe can do, how supportive community can make you feel.
I want to say it was easy to find people who love my writing and my art. It took a lot of years, a lot of work, and a lot of internal changes. I had to let down my guard, in so many ways, and believe that if I was generous in how I gave out, I’d find the generosity in what I received back. Sounds naive to some, I’m sure, but it was that simple.
I also had to reveal more of myself and the reason I created. Just like getting to know a friend, I had to be open about myself to the community I wanted to befriend. This was quite hard at first.
But the community grew. You, if you’re reading this, are part of it. I still don’t know everyone who subscribes to this newsletter—there are thousands of you—but when I write, I feel I’m speaking to each of you, because we’re not that far apart in why we write, why we create. I created this newsletter to start a conversation about that which we share, the creative life and how to sustain it.
I learned this: You can’t create a community until you leave the isolation and reach out. My MFA classmate knew that. I admired his ability, envied his success, and let that envy overtake my openness to learn how he reached out.
Receiving the gifts
This past year, I’ve been flooded with response from the community I created. From the two launch teams of volunteers who read my books pre-release and posted about them. Reviews online and comments on social media, the huge increase in subscribers to this newsletter (thank you!), has shown me that people are generous and they love to help others succeed.
That’s what I didn’t know—or believe—when I was starting out. I still have to pinch myself sometimes to remember it’s not all about competition. Even though the world wants you to think that.
One way I remind myself is by rereading the notes you send when you become a paid subscriber and tell me why. I can’t tell you how much it means to hear how something I’ve sent out into the world, be it my teaching or books or this newsletter, has changed or helped or delighted you in your life as a writer.
Hearing this makes me believe in our community even more, makes me want to open up and share more, help you right back.
One of my writer’s group friends said to me the other day, “You’re sharing a lot more that’s personal here now, aren’t you.” I said yes. I hadn’t dared to before, because I didn’t know if people would be interested in hearing behind-the-scenes of the writing life as I lead it, the publishing journey as I’ve experienced it. But they do. Not everyone, not every time, but enough people that it’s a community.
That’s one of the best feelings a writer can have—I know that now. Isolation isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
Who do you trust?
Spend some time this week describing your creative community, to yourself. Who do you trust? Who do you share your creative work with? Who supports you, educates you, reaches out to you?
If you, like me, create in isolation, ask yourself if that’s satisfying. Maybe it is. If it’s not, what’s one step you might take towards reaching out yourself?
A wonderful exercise that I practice is gratitude in the form of thank you’s to those who have created something that helps me or touches me. Each week, I try to write something—a comment on a post, a note via email or text, a share of their work on socials—that expresses my appreciation of another creative person.
Try that this week! It’s quite the experience. And if you practice it enough, viola, you’re part of a community.
How would you describe your community as a writer? What works for you now, what could be stronger?