Anatomy of a Novel #14

Reassessing what I need from "community," Part I

I took a lot of pictures of lanterns and lights when I was in Japan.

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When I first moved to Boston I joined a writers group that met once a month. I had three little babies at home and needed community so badly. I was overwhelmed and isolated and struck with the uncomfortable realization that I had to make my life happen — it was not going to be served to me on a platter.

Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? But that was a revelation to me as a young woman who had drifted along, doing quite nicely for herself in an environment in which everything was geared toward supporting my efforts. Real life doesn’t work that way.

Now, many years later, I am fully immersed in a professional writing career and part of multiple communities that inspire and support me. I work at a literary nonprofit, interacting with dozens of literary stars each year: Margaret Atwood! Marjan Kamali! Andre Dubus III! Luis Urrea! Lauren Groff! I get to give awards to new writers and help them launch their careers.

I teach online and in person and have cultivated a group of students in whom I genuinely feel invested. I participate in a slack channel with writer friends with whom I feel “safe” enough to ask the questions I’m embarrassed to admit I need help answering.

Occasionally, I attend conferences at which I’m one of the experts, or writing residencies in which I’m surrounded by awe-inspiring talent. In the past 16 years I’ve worked with a few amazing agents who used their passion and instinct to help me build my career.

I have not been alone!

And yet…

I write alone, in my little bubble

I don’t need to tell you, writer friends, that ultimately we are alone — and often lonely — in our creative endeavors. We sit for hours on end wrestling with the doubts that come at us when we experiment with an idea that isn’t yet fully formed, that we understand only as an impulse that needs to be explored.

In those moments, writers are incredibly vulnerable. Is this shit? Is this amazing? What am I even trying to achieve here?

Since Covid, I’ve been mostly writing in a vacuum. I didn’t share my work-in-progress with my then-agent (maybe that was a mistake?) and when I finally did, it was a drawn out, disruptive and ultimately unproductive experience. I ended up having to figure it out on my own.

Then, like many mid-career writers, I found myself deciding I needed to move on, drop the agent I’d admired and trusted, and venture out into the Wild West of querying once again to hunt down a new one.

Now my new agent is pregnant and will be out of commission for, probably, the next six months.

I’m not writing this to complain — I’m writing to explore what being in community means to me NOW. What is it I need, at this point in my career, in order to be “successful”?

What am I even talking about?

I loved that long-ago Boston writing group and am still close friends with one of the writers (hey Erica Ferencik, bestselling thriller writer! How are ya?), but the work I produced during those years was not good.

You could argue this was because I had no idea what I was doing, or that these kind of peer writing groups cheer you on but aren’t set up to give you the kind of rigorous feedback you need when you’re embarking on a long and complex project like writing a book.

Those monthly meet ups resulted in lots of episodic commentary that honed in on small details (“I’d love to see more of Daniel in that scene;” “the sun analogy didn’t quite work for me”). I ended up with a sprawling novel that had no arc to it, no driving question or coherent storyline, and needed to be completely rewritten, multiple times.¹

What was amazing was being buoyed by the support of those writers. Being actively listened to — people think they find writers fascinating, but they rarely actually engage with us as deeply as we want them to.

We yearn for that kind of attention, the seriousness of effort — and not just every now and then, but all the time! We need to know there are other people out there as obsessive as we are, as stuck on some small, weird idea, as brazen or afraid or combative or defeated.

Writing in a vacuum was harder even than giving birth to a 10 lb baby — which at least was OVER after eight hours of pushing.

It’s about knowing what you need

In my next “Anatomy of a Novel,” I’ll share what I’m deciding to do about sharing this next novel with my new, highly pregnant and distracted agent. Here, I’m realizing that it’s the right time for me to join another writing group, in which we share our “uncooked” and meandering writing.

I’m not that excited about sharing early drafts of this new novel. The more experienced I’ve become, the more I see where my weaknesses lie and the higher my expectations are. When I write new scenes, almost all I see is where they are lacking.

Well, I think that can change. I think it has to.

It’s a mindset problem. I need to go back to allowing myself to make mistakes, be playful, write nonsense, experiment. I need to loosen my vice-like grip on productivity and my desire for excellence and just have some fun.

Right now, being “successful” means finding joy in the writing process again.

Right now, I yearn for encouragement and active, insightful conversation around what it means to be a writer today.

My first writing group meeting is tonight, in the charming old conch house that evokes a simpler past — far less self-conscious and effortful, less stuffed to the gills with shiny objects.

Aspiring to perfection is a trap. I’m looking for ways to be messy and bold.

1. It did eventually become This Terrible Beauty. That was the little engine that could — that book had nine lives!