Follow me down my current mental wormhole…
My daydreaming about moving back to the Bay Area crossed moments with an email from a writer friend who works at a writers’ co-op in NYC. That led me to google shared writing spaces in SF because, let’s face it, unless I write a hit best-seller the amount of space we can afford to occupy there will be smaller than what we afford here, and our now separate home office spaces would converge and shrink. I’m also guessing I would never be able to find an office to rent at even quadruple what I pay now.
I found Po Bronson’s web site, where he has a page about the Writers’ Grotto. More poking around there led me to his answer to the question, “Do writers need community?” I know my answer to that question: yes. I have several little communities of other writers, both virtual and real-live-physical-people-in-bodies. Some I see nearly every week, others I only see at conferences, a few I’ve never met at all. All I know is that without them, I’m pretty sure I would be crazy and depressed. (More crazy and depressed.)
Laurel Snyder wrote a great essay for Salon on her addiction to Twitter. Funnily enough, just before I found her piece I’d been thinking about Laurel, who is my Twitter friend. I wondered where she’d gone off to. I missed her presence. (Not that I want to enable, no!) Sherman Alexie wrote a response to Laurel’s article on his site, and his take is that the weakness of technology is the lack of intimacy. The part that got me thinking was his imagined conversation with his detractors: “But Sherman, I have made so many friends on the Internet. I am close to so many more people that I would otherwise be. Because of the Internet, I have hundreds of friends.” Hundreds of friends? Hundreds? I guess that’s my problem. I have a small number of friends.
There is community and then there is friendship. My community is big, and technology has been vital in creating and maintaining it. But friends? Some members of my writing community are also my close friends, but they make up a very small slice of the Venn diagram. Many more I would call “friend” but wouldn’t loan money to or become the godmother of their children or go on vacation with or let stay at my house or spend more than four hours in a car with. “Friend” is a difficult word when it comes to social networking. If you’ve ever seen an update in your Facebook feed along the lines of, “Beverly Cleary has accepted your friendship” or “friend request pending,” you know how wrong that feels. I mean, God knows I love Beverly Cleary’s books almost more than any books in the world, but we are not friends. On Twitter the word is “followers.” That’s weird, too. I’m not Jesus or Jim Jones.”Network” is cold. We need a new word.
Speaking of Jesus, as I thought about friends vs. community, it occurred to me that one of my bigger problems with the contemporary church is the extreme emphasis on community, to the point it’s an idol that replaces faithful obedience and service. We confuse “community” and “friends,” and it’s a problem. There’s an expectation we will all want to spend time together doing all sorts of social stuff. Then when there are relationship challenges or some kind of life milestone, and we discover how few friends there are among the community, or you just don’t fit in or click with people, we’re disenchanted and think the church—or God—has failed us. I don’t need to be friends with everyone in my church community, do I? There are people I love and will pray for but I wouldn’t want to have coffee with.
I feel the same way about the writing community. I need it, and I enjoy being a part of it, and technology helps us find each other and stay in touch and get specific support or advice when needed, but when shit comes down there are maybe five people in my life I would tell and turn to. And that feels fine, and right, and as long as I understand the difference between my friends and my community and recognize the limitations of technology in creating and maintaining the former, I’m down with it. I’m not going to go to Twitter for love, or to be known.
Where was I? Oh yes, shared writing space. Salt Lake needs a place like The Grotto or Paragraph. I’m doing my part—I talked Ann Cannon into renting the office next to mine and we’re going to have our own little writers’ colony in the corner of the basement. I’d love to hear about writer communities you’ve created and why they’re important to you.
12 comments for this post
Oh, man, Sara. Your post totally resonates with me. I love having a sense of a writing community, so I don’t feel alone, and I can keep up with the news of the industry. That’s what I use Twitter and my blog for.
Inside that surface community, I have my writers’ group. They are the ones who will see the things I don’t post on Twitter. The heartaches that go along with being a writer. I’ve even traveled with a few of them, and shared a hotel room, which for me says a lot.
I love having Twitter and Facebook to make connections I otherwise wouldn’t have made. But, for me, close friends are the ones who would be around without those tools. The ones who spontaneously take me to dinner when a particularly harsh rejection comes in.
Sara Reply:
September 1st, 2009 at 12:20 pm
@Brodi Ashton, Sharing a hotel room is practically like marrying someone!
I love the online YA & writing community. I live in a small town buried in the wilds of Western Kentucky. There isn’t much of a writing community to speak of (although the recent success of local author Molly Harper will hopefully change that) and very few library systems have a Young Adult program. When it comes to “real world” contacts, I’m very much lacking. However, thanks to Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and the miracle of e-mail I’m able to stay up-to-date on what is going on and make connections with people I would otherwise never even know existed.
Having said that, I wouldn’t say that I’ve made tons of “friends” online. Commenting on a Facebook status or responding to a Tweet is easy, quick, and impersonal, which is what makes it so great. I don’t need to have a deep relationship with someone for them to give me a great book recommendation or tell me about a program that worked really well at their library.
As for that whole thing about having not having followers…does that mean I should take down my Sara Zarr shrine now?
Sara Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:14 am
@Miss_Tammy, No, it does not mean that in the least!
When…you know,”shit comes down” I hope you’ll turn to me. Or at least feel like you CAN, if you so choose. Even if you wouldn’t share a hotel room with me.
Sara Reply:
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:15 am
@Emily Wing Smith, Emily, you know if it came down to it I’d share a room with you. We could hang a sheets between us, like in It Happened One Night. And you could use the lobby bathroom.
P.S Also, someday I plan to start a writer’s co-op here in SLC called Random House. It will be this quirky Frank-Lloyd-Wrightish house where creativity (and free parking)abounds.
Such a thoughtful post on a lot of fronts. Your discussion of community in the contemporary church really sruck home.
Thanks for this, Sara.
Um. Yeah. In addition to “srucking” home, your comment also “struck home.”
I used to read writing books that recommended joining writers’ groups, and I’d think, “I don’t need one. That’s for people who don’t know how to write.” Wrong! My writing group is the best thing I ever did as a writer. Really. Not just for writing, but for friendship, too.
Like Ann, your comments really “sruck” home for me, too. Having lived a long life (yes, I’m admitting it) I’ve discovered you really only have a handful of friends you can truly count on to be there when you need them! I also discovered this about myself: that for a long time I kept many writer friends at a distance, it felt safer that way for many reasons. In the last year or two, I’ve shortened the distance, wanting more intimacy with fellow writers. Alongside that desire, came a better understanding of what I need to do to nurture a closer relationship with others in the writing community and it’s working!
Amen, and amen to the church’s overkill on “community.” The word is already fading away from embarrassment. (Or is that embarassment? Or embarrasment?) But the word came in handy when we got tired of “church.”
Also, I’m so glad I got to meet Jenn at her bookstore when visiting you in SLC. Did you know the Antelope Island calendar has Labor Day on Tuesday, the 7th?