A Writer's Community

Mark Goodson
Aug 9, 2017 · 4 min read

A writer’s community is a conflict in terms. Not quite an oxymoron like jumbo shrimp, but the two words — writer and community — contradict each other. Writing is solitary work, and community implies cooperative effort.

Writing isn’t always solitary, of course. There are deliberate collaborations that are exceptions to this rule. Important ones. I’m not sure where I would be as a thinker if Malcolm X hadn’t worked with Alex Haley. And I don’t know what I’d teach this year if Wes Moore never contacted the other Wes Moore.

But writing is a solitary craft. Alex Haley, after all those discussions with Malcolm X, still had to stare at a blank white page.

This makes it difficult to pin a writer’s role in and need for community.

Post World War I, pre World War II American literature is a fine example of a flourishing literary community. The jazz clubs in Harlem and the absinthe bars for ex-pats abroad provided a nesting ground for literary prowess.

Then there are counter examples of extreme isolationist writers. The scholars are grateful that Emily Dickinson never allowed her receipt-stub poetry to be tampered with. Jonathan Franzen, when interviewed by the A.V. Club, credited his writing of Freedom to “sensory deprivation.”

Somewhere in the middle of isolationism and community — like an early 20th century Japan — lies the writer.

Maybe the only way to understand the writer’s relationship to community is through a defunct SAT analogy:

writer : community

a) superhero : society

b) fireman : fire

c) island : archipelago

d) coffee : keyboard

e) texas : United States

What’d you answer?

For anyone who wasn’t tortured by the SATs like I was, the trick is to create five sentences. As in, “The writer is to the community as the superhero is to society” and then choose the best fit.

The red herring is d. I say writer, you think coffee and keyboard. Also tempting is Texas because it can secede from the union when it wants to.

But c is correct. And because I’m the one who made this test, you can’t say otherwise. (Now I see how the SATs became an elitist and stubborn examination board)

John Donne was right: no man is an island. But writers form archipelagos.

They exist on their own amidst other writers. And while your reclusive William Blake exists, most writers have a larger community.

This fact shackled my fate as a writer for years.

I didn’t have the community. I wrote volumes of poetry while living in a garage and reading the collected works of Herman Hesse. Occasionally I would step out of my comfort zone and write a letter to a writer I admired. As a sporadic result, I received a letter back from Kay Ryan, sat in Richard Kenney’s boat on the Puget Sound, and gave Edward P. Jones a ride out of D.C.

Those moments kept the ember smoking, but as for attaining a capital “W” status, I figured fate had other plans. I kept writing, fantasizing about my work being discovered posthumously, at once in a state of peace and unease about it.

Now comes the part of this essay where I tell you something that is total common sense and unimpressive: writers communities are thriving online. I know, I know. Keep quiet about it, would you? Big Brother might sniff us out.

While I doubt I’m blowing any minds on Medium with this fact, it was a revelation to me a year and a half ago.

The fact that I am an alcoholic hit me with a similar force on the epiphany scale. I was the last one to realize I had a drinking problem, just like I was stubbornly ignorant of finding my people, my writers, my posse online.

In my defense, I didn’t have a social media account for my first eight years as a serious writer. It was when I began to blog that everything changed.

I have found other writers to form my archipelago.

My only regret was waiting this long to realize something so obvious. Connecting with writers online has helped me forge better communities in the flesh, as well. I’m participating in two writers groups this summer where I live.

I am finally learning the value of a writer’s community. It’s not only the ideas, the brainstorming, the troubleshooting, it’s also the accountability, the pep talks, and the support.

The next literary renaissance will be a digital one. You can hate the notion, but just as there is no stopping technology, there is no stopping each generation’s restless search for expression and aesthetic.

If you find your writing is marooned somewhere, go for a sail and explore the islands around you.

Mark Goodson

Written by

The writer behind the Miracle of the Mundane: www.markgoodson.com

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