Community as Mentor

No novel is written alone.

As someone who has been known to have non-joiner tendencies—I often find myself shuffling to the back of the room when others are exuberantly jumping into an activity—it’s ironic that I find myself more and more enthralled, enchanted, and inspired by the power of community as I grow older as a writer.

A community is a mysterious thing. My creative community keeps growing and changing shapes and flowing in new directions, surprising me, taking me to new places in such nourishing ways. It’s the definition of magic. Constant transformation.

I just returned from the Okoboji Writers Retreat, which is held at Lake Okoboji in northwest Iowa. It’s an odd retreat. Odd because it’s hard to explain why it’s so special. So intimate. So kind. So giving. So selfless.

I’ve been thinking about this because making art can be so much about the self, especially for those of us who have big egos, but being part of a community puts you in service to others. You can’t just take from them. If you don’t give, you really won’t be a part of things. You won’t experience the magic bolt of connection or that upswell of support that is often delivered randomly … at the most crucial moment.

The myth of the solitary hero

Most writers tend to be solitary creatures. We sit in the penumbra of the light at our desks, anguishing over the inertia of a plot, crumbling up pieces of paper, biting our fingernails, and hoping that the next cup of coffee will deliver more inspiration than jitters.

Our culture celebrates the notion of a solitary heroic ideal, rugged self-starters who meet challenges and overcome adversity, whether it’s the sports star who leads his or her team to victory or the scientist who cures a deadly disease.

Solitude no doubt plays an important element in writing, but if you trace the history of literature, you realize how it takes a veritable village to write a book.

Take C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. When they first met, they were just two men with a “writing hobby,” as Lewis put it. They loved to talk about Nordic myths and epics, but they knew their colleagues in the Oxford English department wouldn’t give their fanciful tales any critical gravitas, so they met regularly at a pub to imbibe pints and stories.

As they shared their writing more and more, they met other writers who felt like outsiders as well, so they formed the Inklings, a group of writers who were searching with “vague or half- formed intimations and ideas,” as Tolkien wrote. The themes that would later appear in Lewis and Tolkien’s books first emerged during the Inklings’ weekly discussions.

We often look for a mentor, which is challenging to find, but it’s worth noting that a community becomes its own type of mentor.

Tolkien said Lewis’s “sheer encouragement” was an “unpayable debt.” He said, “He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff ’ could be more than a private hobby.”

Hemingway fed off the creative energy of Paris in the 1920s, not to mention the writing advice of Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson. (And what would Gertrude Stein have been without Alice B. Toklas?) Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston defined their unique voices alongside each other as leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and the rest of the Beats tumbled, bounded, and danced through their words as if they were an improv group riffing off of each other—creating each other as they created themselves.

Riffing as creative process

Frissons of creativity tend to happen with others. Finding like-minded creative friends is important for those seminal imaginative sparks to catch fire.

“None of us is as smart as all of us,” the saying goes. An initial idea grows through the interchange of ideas, with one idea sparking another idea—and then the light bulb of inspiration glows.

Think of a jazz group, where individual musicians riff on a melodic theme. They don’t necessarily know where the song is going. The group has the ideas, not the individual musicians, but unexpected insights emerge, and a beautiful new song flows from the group.

When you work with others, you’re naturally combining an assortment of different concepts, elaborating and modifying each others’ thoughts. Your writing community can be a goad, a check, a sounding board, and a source of inspiration, support, and even love.

There’s a reason it’s difficult to beat the home team in sports: they have an extra teammate, the crowd.

In a community, you tend to benefit from fellow authors’ writing and publishing journeys in unexpected ways. I can’t think of any door that opened for me that wasn’t somehow opened by another. An introduction to an agent. A writing residency. A teaching job.

I spent a couple of decades of my early writing life going it alone, more or less, in large part because I was honoring two of my worst traits: insecurity and arrogance. Insecurity and arrogance are a toxic combo because together they didn’t allow me to ask for help. They didn’t allow me to join others.

It’s in that simple asking for help, that simple trust of opening up to another, where creativity speeds up, getting a literal injection of fuel.

Every novel is defined by the community of writers it belongs to. A novel isn’t written solely by its author; it’s also a work of the people surrounding and supporting the author.

Exercise: Think of all the people who support you creatively, and remember to celebrate the gift of their collaboration and seek them out in times of need.

Free Open House for Accountability Write-Ins!

I host an ongoing series of “accountability write-ins”—weekly gatherings to help people set goals, join a community of support, and … write—just write! (That’s the name of the class, in fact: “Write! Just Write!”).

Free session! This Wednesday, October 2, please join us for a free session to see if this might work for you.

Our sessions occur on Zoom, so you can join in no matter where you are.

I’m available for book coaching and editing!

I love working with writers, and I have some space on my Writing Consult calendar if you’re looking for help.

I help people develop books and projects from scratch and sometimes do larger edits on finished manuscripts.

I can also work with you like a manuscript therapist, with as many hourly sessions as desired.

Lately, I've worked on a few novels as well as some short story projects. I’ve also worked on helping people figure out what kind of writer they are or want to be, and which projects can help get them there.

Contact me to find out more about my one-on-one work with writers.

Because a quote

“I am not interested in a career. I am interested in creating community.”

—The great musician Pauline Oliveros

Because I love thistles