As shared in My Writing Habits & Practices, all too often writing is taught and thought to be such a solitary practice. We’re given the image of a person, at their desk, wracked with writer’s block, staring out into their little window of the world as the birds flap by, inspiration wafting by, as we search for creative passageway in utter isolation. Or so we’re told. The reality is that writing in community is such a vital and significant process of being a good writer, a writer who learns and grows, who writes with others, who consults with others, and who does not allow the individualism, wrecks throughout our community / country / current thread of this unfortunate timeline, to push us away from other writers, storytellers, and creatives. Writers need one another to become the storytellers of our dreams.
I know this, by accidentally achieving a writer’s dream in kindergarten: well before I knew how to even spell anything besides my awesome first name (my name’s long, so spelling the rest of it was an expert level of difficulty), I was writing picture books. In fact, I was crafting enough work as a storyteller that my kinder-teachers honored my books by placing them on the bookshelf with the rest of our reading and then declaring me author of the week back in 1990-something. An astounding achievement, one which I have yet to properly rival as a writer near his 40s. But my community then were my peers, my teachers, and that level of recognition gifted me more confidences with my storytelling (and my words to be) than I sometimes realize. I’m thankful for my community for seeing me.
Before I started into classes at school or even at my university, I was sharing my fandom writing across the world wide web on a lil site called FanFiction.net—a place where my love for Pokémon, Buffy, and Star Wars got to shine AND get read and reviewed by random strangers (aka: the charm of the internet). I even had websites that helped to catalogue and share some of my work (i.e.: doing then what I’m doing now on my a long and wanzy road site lol), where I somehow taught myself HTML on a geocities site. But it was all about sharing my reach with strangers, a weird comfort that would propel me to where I am today—also, truly wrote over 50 short stories in middle school and high school around a Pokémon story that got at least one person spinning off my work. Work that I’ll occasionally peek at, laugh at the reviews that say, “DID A CHILD WRITE THIS?!” (which yes, Middle School Wanz DID in fact write this), but still appreciative of that the virtual creative community I could find comfort (and some criticism) in and the various virtual communities my original work now lives in.
I’ve known myself to be an English-major-to-be, a storyteller of sorts, especially in the FanFiction.net days, well into any assignment in high school or college that had an option to write a creative response to something instead of a boring ole essay. In attending traditional schools (i.e.: not “Schools of the Art”—although the SOTA in San Francisco started a writing program while I was in high school I was bummed I did not attend), teachers offering spaces for creative writing, for creative responses, and allowing it to be read, fed my urge as a writer in ways that sustained me in college (when I became an English major proper), where I learned about the classic style workshopping. Admittedly, the workshop experience was a bit overwhelming, helped me with a larger fear of feedback, and began to demystify my belief in needing to get everyone’s feedback. But I deeply valued my education environments offering space for us to lean into the craft of creative storytelling, of sharing writing, and soliciting opinions from other writers beyond myself to further and enhance own of writing. (And it would challenge me later to consider what I might do different in my own workshop spaces.)
In college, I joined our university’s literary journal – which was wild, only because I was also a full time student, working 20-30 hours a week in a lead/supervisorial role, volunteering with teen leadership programming during the school year, and supporting other on-campus groups while enjoying a social life (burnt out and overhelpfulness on full display) – but I was excited to be a part of a space that elevated others art and writing. I definitely gave made-up titles to myself with the editorial team, but I make sure to read, offer feedback, and create a platform for others to get a chance to share their work, and it was excited to see their work get published, to have a piece or two myself get elevated, and to create a space that printed work, celebrated it, and gave folks a chance to finally feel like a real creative. I would tap into these spaces again with community zines or individuals publishing lit mags in Oakland and Chicago, and though we strive for prestigious journals to share our stuff, there’s a power in communities creating space for other creatives to be seen. I’m thankful for those who’ve organized spaces for many author’s first publishing.
After I graduated, my writing community drastically shrank – I found a friend or two in Tacoma who I would occasionally write with, often times exchange books with, but I found myself editing pieces from colleges, elongating them, starting new things, or just landing on things I loved and would share with friends. Lean into friends who want to read your work—the clown piece I wrote in my Playwriting class was so silly and beloved I ended up writing close to 10 scripts about the same cast of characters because of the energy that came forth from readers. I’m thankful for my people who enjoyed being flooded with my silly pages, wandering wonders, and supporting me in those times.
I would activate writing communities in-person come my time in Oakland and Chicago, as well as seek out existing writing communities (because I don’t always need to be a facilitator, as reminder I must uphold). But as I came up with new stories, crafted my scripts, and played with prompts, I found other creative writers in the greater Bay Area who would want to come together to write. Many folks were found in our karaoke crew in the East Bay, the community organizers that overlapped in the same space, and many wayward writers no longer in educational institutes who were seeking connection with others they could not find. It wasn’t always a “workshop” format, sometimes it would be “Hey, let’s have brunch and then drink a bunch of mimosas and write something.” Or it could be “Hey, let’s connect at this café and just have a quiet writing day.” But we also solicited feedback and workshopped one another’s work – it would be done with conversation, with heart, and with opportunities to have pieces grow beyond ourselves. In Chicago, I found myself offering those spaces to a much smaller group, with a heavier emphasis on our writing practices, creative thoughts, and more community building than actual writing—and honestly, all of it mattered and furthered ourselves as writers and storytellers. Thank you for the establishments that housed us, for the creatives that came together to write with one another, and for the willingness to be in informal spaces to grow, to learn, and to thrive together as our creative selves.
What mattered was also engaging in spaces where I was not the leader. As a writer, if all you are doing is convening and facilitating and leading, you are depriving yourself of a chance to be within the community to lean into your own creative storytelling. Over 2020, I began engaging in virtual spaces—some organizing writing spaces I led, but also joining free writing workshops led by the NYWC, even joined a journaling workshop, and as everything started to open up, I continued to find spaces where I could just be in creativity. Where prompts opened portals of potential new stories. Where I could pick up others’ methods of facilitating, but also just show up as myself, as a writer working on a story, working on a novel, or just ready to work on something new. If you are a person who leads spaces in community, never forget or forgo spaces to allow you to just be in community, within needing to offer a service.
To write, means there’s a story within us we want to actualize, to put words to, to have it be comprehendible. The very act of writing is communicating a story that we have within ourselves. Why write it down if it wasn’t meant to be read and shared. We were never meant to write our stories alone.