Building a Writing Support Toolkit Part One: Community
Cue REM ("You're Not Alone...")
Hi friends,
Last week I freaked a lot of you out by suggesting that you start planning now for the beginning of the semester so that you can claim your time before the university claims it for you.
I’ve been editing some seriously good work lately and getting some seriously good reports about how the world is being good to people doing good work. And I got to spend yesterday floating down a river in the Texas Hill Country (and it was only in the mid-80s!) so overall there are some great summer vibes.
Because we can’t all spend the summer on the river (but why not, really?) over the next few weeks, I want to share with you some ideas of how to build out a toolkit of writing support. Not all of these ideas will resonate with you, but I hope that some will, and that you’ll have these posts to refer back to when things start getting hard and you realize you need a hand. Today, I’ll start big: what it means to have a community of folks who support your writing.
You-Yes You-Need a Writing Community!
Who Needs This? I believe that everyone needs a community of people who a) don’t know very much about your work and b) are cheering you on from the sidelines.
Why? Writing can be super lonely and isolating. And then, a false sense of scarcity gets in your head and tells you that you’re an imposture and don’t deserve to be there and there are so few opportunities and only the cool people will get them, and why even try. Which makes us even more isolated, and petty, and everything feels terrible.
But look, when cool people have good things happen to them, we all win. Root for the folks in your community, and celebrate their wins like your own.
What does it look like to write with other people? Here are some ideas!
—As Mirya says, make your circles into horseshoes. Making friends as an adult is the literal worst, and feels totally cringy, but you can do it!
—Find synchronous and asynchronous times to connect. This might be a workshop or a writing circle. This might be a Zoom writing group with friends you made at the last conference. This might be a text chain with your “no” committee from grad school.
—Conferences, mini-conferences, workshops, writing retreats are all ways to build your network. Workshops and mini-conferences can be super easy to host. Reserve a big room at your university, ask your department chair for $150, Doordash some good Indian food, and invite your favorite folks from campus to come work with you. Or, text some fun people who are at other universities within a five-hour drive, rent a big house somewhere in the middle, and spend the weekend writing together (and tell your university it’s a workshop to get it paid for). If you want structure, people like me host these things all the time, so reach out! But they’re really simple to pull off on your own.
Your homework: Start now. Look, right now you’re like “hey, I’m doing okay, nothing is stressful, lemme wait til I see how the semester shakes out.” But future-you, come October, is going to realize the semester is stressful and that now you feel like you’re in a spiral that you can’t get out of (no? Just me?) And then you won’t want to reach out because you don’t want to stress other people out and ahhhh why is life like this.
So present-you, before August 1, is going to spend 30 minutes free writing one morning about the kind of community support that helps when you start to feel stressed or anxious. Then, make yourself a plan. Here are 10 ideas you can try—pick two or three, put them on your calendar, and send text or emails to confirm.
—> join a Zoom writing group (or start your own)
—> start a text circle
—> plan a standing, in-person co-writing session
—> plan a writing get away with some folks over a three-day weekend
—> apply for funds for a writing retreat
—> ask friends to stay before or after a big conference to host a mini-writing retreat or workshop
—> find an online space (like Slack!) that isn’t terrible and start posting in it a few times a week to build an online community
—> invite your buddies to speak at a speaker series on your campus this fall, and get money for them to stay before or after so you can write together
—> make it a goal to email one person a week and tell them about how awesome their work is
—> offer to host a virtual or in-person one day writing retreat.
All of these are easy, need few or no resources, and can be scaled up and down to meet your time and money needs.
My little academic community
Every year, I host a number of free writing events to build academic community: AcWriMo (writing every day in November with a day-long minimalist writing retreat) and ApWriMo (writing for the last two weeks of April with a day-long minimalist writing retreat), and pop-up events here and there. Everyone who participates in these is invited to our Slack community of accountability and snark.
Free end-of-summer pop-ups:
August 20: 2-3 eastern: Spring 2024: Let’s talk. A combo ask-me-anything and strategy session. We’ll chat about planning for the fall semester, setting intentions, and kicking ass.
August 21: 12-1 eastern: Let’s read. A writing room, but for reading. Pour yourself some tea, close your laptop, and spend an hour reading that book that’s been in your bag all summer but you’ve never managed to open.
August 22: 2-3 eastern: Let’s write. An hour-long goal-setting and writing session to get you ready for the fall.
Sign up here, and I’ll send you a link for all 3 sessions—join for one, two, or all three!
Writing support all semester long:
If you’re writing a book, the next quarter of my book writing workshop kicks off August 6-8, and I promise there’s no better group of people to be writing alongside. The focus for August’s quarter is all about telling a story and how to focus on the mezzo level of the writing process. Join us!
Our weekly writers’ circles are a fantastic way to build community, support, and accountability around your writing practices all semester long. Join us for those!
For either of these you can add coaching (next week’s topic!) and editing (the following week’s topic!) to help you build out your whole toolkit of writing support so you can focus on just producing the research that will change the world (you know, no pressure).
Happy writing, friends, and let me know how this community building goes!
xoxo,
Kelly