Writing community
10 things we learned from hosting over 25 writing meetings
When my friend, Shibani Krishnatraya, and I created this writing community — The Folded Paper (TFP) — it was just a weekend hobby. It gradually has become our weekend ritual; we completed 25 meetings of the format ‘Writing and Creativity Jam’ on September 26, 2020. About 15 of these meetings were conducted online with people from various places in India — New Delhi, Assam, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and more.
It is both a personal record and a collective achievement. It has shown me I can be persevering and dedicate myself to one singular thing for this long without many perks and external motivation. Collectively, the community members have devoted nothing less than 500 hours to writing in these meetings alone and have contributed to building a creative, positive, and safe space.
We have learned many things in this environment where people (most of them haven’t even met each other in person) take ownership of the community experience to progress together and truly express themselves through writing. Here are our top picks from many such learnings.
1. Possibilities emerge when we don’t lose sight of our goal
We started TFP to achieve our goal of writing with a community. When shaking hands before sanitizing them was acceptable, we got a few of our friends and started writing in the public lawns of India Gate, India. Slowly, we graduated to a donut cafe, bargaining with the owner to allow us to sit for two hours in exchange for buying donuts (We did buy many!). We also started conducting workshops to share our knowledge more methodically.
Then as a possible full stop to the momentum, the pandemic arrived and we couldn’t do much. Until we started doing what we could. We conducted online writing meetings. Since then there have been many progressions in our writing journey — we added two new meeting formats, experimented with ideas, increased in numbers, wrote many stories, started meeting often — to list a few.
All this while, we put systems, efforts, people, and love behind the goal — ‘writing with a community’, and worked on the possibilities that presented themselves. And, we can’t be happier and more content.
2. A community can do wonders
It is easier to say our idea is great. The tough part is for others to say the same about our idea. When we started, we were blessed to have some people who believed in us and trusted us with their time and ideas. They have continued to motivate us. Even the relatively new Paperians have stood up to the occasion many times.
One shining example was when in the 25th meeting, both Shibani and I faced network issues. A community member, Paperian Shivangi, stepped up and engaged everyone for about fifteen minutes before both of us got our internet connections back. We had not asked her to be a backup for us if such a thing were to happen. Also, did I say no one dropped off from the meeting during that time — there were supposed to be 14 people, and all 14 of them stayed put and interacted with each other before the writing activities officially began.
Now, if some member feels she can’t write a week, the others motivate her to give her best try. We share resources to write better. When a Paperian shares an issue he is facing, others empathize and say words of comfort. Everybody brings their knowledge and unique perspectives without inhibitions. Result — we enjoy the process of writing!
People have accepted the community as their own and that is the highest form of motivation we could ask for.
3. Sharing an idea will either show it is not good enough or make it better
The Folded Paper has made me brave. I am able to lay bare my ideas without mulling over them for long.
In our ‘Writing and Creativity Jam’ meetings, we have a session where we just have to share our first thoughts and impressions on a few prompts. Most of the ideas we share aren’t technically ‘good’ or even real. But, we have tasted the truly liberating and thrilling experience of sharing an idea with a non-judgemental crowd. It inspires us to write on and refine the ideas.
Shibani and I brainstorm intensely for these meetings and the first thing we do — list all our ideas so that the obvious and not-so-exciting ones are out of our system and space is created for fresher ideas that we can improve with planning and execution.
4. Creativity is boundless
Ask any Paperian, they will say they like the creativity and the varied perspectives in the meetings. We can’t agree more. For instance, one of our writing prompts was to write a conversation between Summers and Winters. This is what came out of it from three of our members.
Who thought Summers and Winters could speak, argue, and win or lose an argument!
5. Care for the people around you, they will care for you too
Shibani and I couldn’t find a positive, open, collaborative place to write. So we decided to create one. We take extra care to the best of our abilities to make the community experience valuable and accepting of different perspectives. The result — we asked for a few videos congratulating The Folded Paper on its 25th meeting. We got them, but we also got much more — art, design work, stories, and more!
Watch some of the videos that Paperians sent to TFP on its 25th meeting.
6. We all have something to say and can take out time to say that
The Folded Paper consists of both hobby and aspiring writers. And most of us have had our own struggles and inhibitions with writing. Hence, you will find a spectrum of people who have varying degrees of imposter syndrome and self-doubt — the nagging and tiring thought that we don’t have much to say, we aren’t interesting enough, our writing makes no sense, and no one is going to read them. Paperians are working extremely hard to root out such thinking, and accept that we do have our own — definitely different — but our very own stories, ideas, and imagination. We are continually embracing our thoughts and marching towards liberation.
In spite of our many responsibilities, some distractions, and different priorities in life, we still are taking out time to attend the meetings, or write for the prompts, or engage in the Instagram writing activities. We are trying and we can’t be prouder!
One thing that did most of the trick was to defy our perception that only long-form writing is writing; 10 or 100 or 1000 words — all are writing. See how Paperians wrote for these memes.
Also, this dictionary that we created on World Literacy Day.
7. Writing can be done online too
Writing is a solitary work. Of course. The trials of this job become more bearable and the process more enjoyable when we write with a community. So we met people to write with in the pre-pandemic days.
But we weren’t much sure of how writing online will pan out as writing is an intimate activity. We learned from our workshops that a human sitting near to us, listening to our writeups, and giving us feedback are essential to the whole experience.
Online meetings have weakened this stance of ours. We all are inching our way towards expressing ourselves through writing, no matter the medium. In fact, when the world will open up, we will have excelled in both the mediums and can continue to write — online and offline.
8. Hard work done with care really pays off
Not a big realization.
But as Steve Jobs said, “You connect the dots by looking backwards.” We are able to now connect each dot created with deliberate planning, care, and hard work.
The 25th meeting was the biggest, and most recent example of this. We celebrated it the TFP’s way — by facilitating an open space to talk out our creative ideas and share our expressions through writing. But, it wasn’t Shibani or me who conducted these sessions.
Four of our Paperians — Shivangi Jain, Pooja Chauhan, Krati Bhardwaj, and Mantosh Patnaik — worked extremely hard to conduct four individual sessions. The entire 25th meeting team planned even the minutest thing, which appeared redundant and even unnecessary at the time. On the-day, they all together created a wholesome experience where all the participants were super-happy, creatively satisfied, and inspired by the exchange of ideas and the collaboration.
9. Acceptance is key to happiness
One of the Paperians, Krati Bhardwaj, said it the best way, paraphrasing it a little — “Don’t think if you are right. Even if your idea sounds wrong, just go with it, accept it. Amazing things will come out of it.”
She definitely looks happy in the meetings. So do we all as we accept our weird, quirky, absurd, and wonderful ideas and write on them.
10. We must give and take these things from our writing
Stephen King gave all of us the permission to write. But, we will have to give ourselves the space, time, freedom to write.
Space: It could be our room, a community like The Folded Paper. Also the mental space to think.
Time: May be a year to write a book, one month to complete a short story series, or 10 minutes to write a journal. Also, two days to edit after the writing is done. This gives us the timed pressure to actually sit and write.
Freedom: When we will sit for those 10 minutes or an hour everyday to write, we must give ourselves the freedom to let our thoughts run and write them down. Editing can be done later.
Also, take away these things -
- Pressure to be perfect.
- Need to be interesting.
- Control to write only the best thing or nothing.
- Fear of whether anybody will read and call your writing bad.
A community can accelerate us, but we will have to start our engine. We will have to hold ourselves accountable and own the process of writing. And keep writing.
About The Folded Paper
We want to make writing more mainstream and pleasurable for everyone. Follow us on @thefoldedpapergroup on Instagram to combine your writing journey with ours.
Want to join us? Drop a message on Instagram.
