Building Your Writing Community

I am lucky enough to spend the holiday weekend with dear friends I met in my MFA program at Antioch University over a decade ago. We fly, then drive from cities and small towns, wind down long, steep roads and gather in a house overlooking the Coast to celebrate a milestone birthday. But as we reconnect, it's obvious there is so much more to recognize: sobriety, a couple of books, a baby, a marriage, a law degree, an engagement, a successful blog launch and subsequent book proposal request, and our friendship.

Ten years after meeting my writing family, despite all the time we've spent apart and even though we live in different cities and write different genres from different perspectives, we still strive to tell our stories. In our conversations we weave narratives. We introduce new characters, construct settings, pile on conflicts, and seek out resolution. We gaze out at the Pacific for hours, each of us searching for the story that will set us free.

But we are writers. We will never truly be loose of the stories we are compelled to tell. That is why it is so critical that we stick together.

Writers have to find other writers, because this can be isolating business.

I soak in three days with my writing family and then I make the long trip home, thousands of miles from this creative community. I arrive at my coffee shop the next morning. I check-in with another writing friend, my local-writing-family, and then, with the momentum of writers everywhere sitting pen in hand or before a glowing screen, I put down the words.

They are what keep us going,
keep me going,
keep going.