It Takes a Village

Mood Tools Week 5: How to build a truly supportive writing community

I’m literally typing this essay (or the first draft of this essay, at least), at the inaugural Blaze-o-Rama writing party at a bar in Belmont, Massachusetts.

I’m writing at a table with several writing friends—one of my oldest and one of my newest—in a room full of tables full of writers quietly writing alone together.

Not my best photo ever, but this is the table of writers I was at with their identities cleverly disguised because I don't have time to ask for their permission to use their likenesses.

Normally writing is a solitary pursuit, but Blaze-o-Rama turns writing into a community event by gamifying our goals. When we checked in, we were asked to help set a communal word count by pledging the number of words we thought we could realistically write in an hour. The Blaze-o-Rama crew added up the total number of pledged words to create our target collective word count before hitting a starting gong—literally.

If we reach our group goal, free drinks.

If we DON’T make the group goal, we’ve been told the writing portion of this party will be extended five minutes at a time until said goal is reached. I’m pretty sure the lockdown bit is a bluff, but given the whackadoodle nature of the writerly imagination, I can’t be sure.

To be honest, I don’t give a flying flip about the writing goal.

What I do care about, though, is the community.

Walking into the event space, one of my oldest writing friends threw her arms around me in a swaying bear hug. The room was packed with a mixture of writers I met that night and writers who have been in the trenches with me almost as long as I’ve been writing fiction. And because everyone at this event—published or unpublished—identifies as a writer, everyone in this room understands what it means to make sense of the world through writing. There’s something incredibly powerful about walking into a room of a hundred people who not only understand why I’ve arranged my life to maximize writing time, but who have also very likely done the same themselves. Writing talk in this room is greeted not with the bemusement but with the active encouragement of one powerful question that gets asked again and again and again: How’s it going?

It, of course, being—ever and always—the writing.

Blaze-o-rama isn’t the extent of my community—I have writing friends scattered across the world and many of my local writing friends aren’t even here—but it is a vibrant incarnation of the community that I need like a fish needs water.

And if the poster child for introversion (me) and the poster child for social anxiety (also me) can build a strong writing community, anyone can.

It helps, of course, that I live in one of the best writing cities in the world—Boston!—and that I connected with a local independent writing center when I first started to get serious about writing. I signed up for classes hoping to learn valuable craft lessons, and I did, but what was truly invaluable about those classes was the regular access to like-minded writing peers. Any time I came across a writer who offered kind and constructive feedback to help the work being discussed reach its full potential, I reached out, then held on to those who reached back. The community I built up one person at a time over decades is a large part of the reason I’ve been writing for decades. Because while there’s something incredibly powerful about surrounding yourself with writers who understand wins that look like nothing to a layperson, there’s something lifesaving about surrounding yourself with writers who can commiserate about writerly lows.

My community has saved my writing life more times than I can count.

Which is all well and good coming from the lady who’s enjoying a community more than twenty years in the making (also me), but what about the solo writers lonely for community? To those writers, I say welcome. Hibou may be just a newsletter from a foul-mouthed writer chick (me again), but that foul-mouthed writer chick vividly remembers the day when the only writing community she had was the voice in her head whispering that the journalism career was never going to scratch her itch to write fiction, a voice that led her on a journey into community that started out with haunting bookstore writing reference shelves.

I guess what I’m saying is lean on the community you have. Go to bookstore events. Post about books you read on social media. Attend library events. Find a writing group, swap work, and be as kindly constructive to them in your feedback as you’d like them to be in theirs. Because on days the writing’s not going well and you feel like a fool for ever thinking you could tackle a novel, there’s nothing quite like the boost from a writer friend you admire who believes in you enough to ask about your work.

But again, that’s all well and good coming from a woman who got tackled by writing lovelies at an event this month.

But—also again—if Hibou is the only community you have, I’m really glad you’re here.

So glad I’m going to brave turning on the chat function in your honor.

Join my new subscriber chat

Today I’m announcing a brand new addition to my Substack publication: the HIBOU subscriber chat.

This is a conversation space in the Substack app that I set up exclusively for my subscribers — kind of like a group chat or live hangout. I’ll post short prompts, thoughts, and updates that come my way, and you can jump into the discussion.

To join our chat, you’ll need to download the Substack app, now available for both iOS and Android. Chats are sent via the app, not email, so turn on push notifications so you don’t miss conversation as it happens.

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How to get started

1. Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Substack Chat is now available on both iOS and Android.

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

Take Away from Mood Tools Week 5: It Takes a Village

Because while there’s something incredibly powerful about surrounding yourself with writers who understand wins that look like nothing to a layperson, there’s something lifesaving about surrounding yourself with writers who can commiserate about writerly lows.

My community has saved my writing life more times than I can count.