One of my biggest disappointments with the “writing community” at large is that writing organizations are often catering to those who are either looking for a way to jump-start a career or to those who wish to pursue an isolated self-expression. Writing has again and again been considered and romanticized as a solitary pursuit either for self-satisfaction or fame, but when I look back on my life, writing combined with self-governed community has been the most powerful combination over and over.
My little community came together this week to find a home for this cat. He was likely abandoned by somebody moving away, and was just the sweetest and friendliest thing. We started feeding him and he came by every day. We couldn’t take him in because our greyhound would try to eat him. We were worried about him as it gets colder and rainier here but we found him a warm and loving home. His new owner calls him “Gimmy”.
Whether it’s a group of friends dedicated to showing up, hungover, each week at the local cafe to share a few pages of error-riddled work or a rigorous, contained circle writing novels together, these community spaces are transformative. Meeting up with others to get vulnerable about art is when I have been most challenged and motivated not only in my craft, but in thinking about my work’s positionally and potential in the world, how I connect to and support others in my community, how I can be more honest and connected with the emotions in my body, how I can better empower others.
Conversations in those spaces inevitably become rigorous conversations about how to make art that is vital for making progress towards a better world. Conversations in those spaces have inspired other action in the world on my part. Plus, the very work of writing feels better when done in connection with a community.
Community makes your work a conversation starter; a piece contributing to a bigger whole, regardless of whether it gets published or accepted by an establishment that gets narrower and more scarce and that will inevitably abandon righteousness to save itself. Community gives work purpose.
I couldn’t possibly let you miss out on this dog photo. This is a therapy dog brought to a student-led voter registration event on campus.
As we look ahead to a global phenomenon of fascism and authoritarianism, it’s clear that regardless of who is in power in the United States, we are entering an era where to weather this time we will need nourishment to build resilience and commit to the preservation of ideas about radical love, care, and liberation. This can only be accomplished through community and connection.
Sometimes, I have questioned whether art or writing is a good organizing principle. Despite the idealization of artists, plenty of artists are assholes. Plenty have no interest in collective liberation. Is art, as an isolated concept, really something that can unite people? Does writing and art really make a concrete “difference” in the world anymore? It is certainly a flawed organizing principle.
But lately I am re-convinced that art and stories are going to be vital for nourishment, imagining futures, and preventing isolation. I am re-convinced that pushing for rigor in our engagement with stories, art, and media as a whole is important to combating misinformation and preserving critical and nuanced thinking. For giving people the ability to have a clear-eyed understanding of their values and their own minds. Nourishing and righteous art is just one piece of a bigger movement, but it doesn’t make it irrelevant.
Here’s what I would love in a community. I’m writing it down so I can attempt to imagine better worlds/work towards it/build on it/discourse with others on it:
Membership of writers (or perhaps artists at large)
Free or affordable with free components
Involves physical, localized space, not just online
Non-hierarchical, where level of capitalistic accomplishment does not determine the weight of your voice
Focused on nourishment through community building
Leverages that nourishment to empower each other to make concrete positive change/influence
Explicitly not focused on conventional career building
Explicitly stated anti-racist, anti-colonialist, pro-collectivism, pro-liberation, pro-environment values
Not focused on “workshopping”, but does have room for sharing, parallel work, etc.
Rejects that individual writers alone can be “thought-leaders” or that genius and influence can exist in a vacuum
Am I saying that I don’t want a writing career? No. To say otherwise would be lying to myself. As long as we remain in a capitalist society, being able to sustain myself and my family off of my writing would be a dream come true. But I want my career to remain connected to community, and use any sort of power I gain along the way to uplift and empower others; to remain a collective.
I have heard of similar spaces (The Ruby, Sincere Studio, Liminal Bodies), but have yet to discover one that quite fits what I’m looking for or that I was able to participate in myself.
Do you know examples of such spaces? What else would you add to this list for such a space? How would you approach finding or organizing one?
Melvin’s favorite activity in the world is to sit in David’s lap then stare at me.