On writing in community
Start thyself a writing group!
Almost exactly a year ago I saw someone on a listserv I belong to ask about an accountability buddy for writing their book. I responded immediately: let’s do this.
Much of book writing advice — any advice, really — is context dependent. Almost nothing works for everyone. But if there’s one thing I’d say to anyone writing a book, or honestly just longform journalism, is to start a writing group.
Writing, as we all know, is a lonely endeavor. Book publishing is an arcane system, really only knowable to beginners if you have people to ask about it and hear about their experiences. Freelance journalism is both lonely and messy, its vagaries navigable best if you have someone to bitch with.
There’s four of us in my little book writing club. I’m not going to tell you who everyone else is aside from me because I don’t want to blow up their spot on their book writing journeys — or rather, I wouldn’t dare steal their thunder by revealing they are working on their own books. Here’s what I will say: We’re all women, we are all journalists, we all live in different places and timezones. Some of us are freelance, some of us have full-time jobs.
One of them is a true internet friend: we connected thanks to that listserv and have never met in real life. I worked with the other two at different points in the same organization (they didn’t know each other). We meet weekly, we text almost daily. I won’t speak for the others, but after this year, I consider all of them my close friends.
Because our meetings go far beyond accountability buddying. In fact, accountability is probably the smallest part of our relationship (although since we’re now all under different deadline pressures, we’ve turned up the dial on “I will do this by next week, hold me to it!”).
The regular, frequent cadence of our chats means we are updated on each other’s lives — and crucially, our pets’ lives (we have 12!!! between us). We show each other new tattoos, wedding dresses.
We complain about our work. We gossip about the media world all the time (and there’s been a lot to gossip about, iykyk). We are each other’s job references.
We constantly ask each other for advice, whether it’s about how to phrase an email to an agent, a text to an editor, a story pitch. A lot of it is not directly related to our books, but we’ve become a perfect advisory board for each other — we don’t work for the same companies, so we have the necessary distance, but we’re all in the same line of work, so we *just get it.* We’re a remote water cooler. Our book writing club members’ enemies are our enemies.
And then there’s the book stuff, the WRITING, the essence of the whole endeavor. We’re seeing nearly everything the others write, from the agent queries, to proposal draft after proposal draft, to the actual book chapters. In our careers, we’ve all been editors in one way or another, which helps immensely. But I think our input operates on a different emotional level than a dispassionate editor’s, precisely because we are friends. Our work will be edited by that dispassionate editor too, but at least for me, my writing club friends occupy that liminal space in between my mind and the outside world. When we chat in the Google Doc comments about the writing, we keep in mind our backstories, our frustrations, our insecurities. That doesn’t mean we pull punches — we became friends *through* writing, the entire point is to be helpful and move the project forward and not just pat each other on the back. (That said, we do boost each other all the time.)
When we started, one of us had secured a book deal, one of us had just gotten an agent (me), and two were working on their proposals. We’ve all progressed to the next steps of book publishing, with each other’s help and cheerleading. We’ve been deeply immersed in one another’s work from very early on, which I’m convinced, at least for me, will prove invaluable as time passes. I have three external brains to witness and aid with the transformation of my work. I know my brain can’t wait to witness the transformation of theirs.
🧠 🧠 🧠 🧠
I’d love to know about your writing community! How did you start or find it? What does it give you? How many pets do you all have?
P.S. Ugh, I really can’t decide on my favorite way to emphasize (CAPS, italics, **??)
It's nice to know you good friends with the same interests. It doesn't matter you are in different time zone as long as you have each other. Good luck yo you and your friends!