Lately, I’ve been wondering what it might look like to collaborate with other artists and writers, to live out a creative life in community
When I lived in Merrillville several years ago, I joined a writer’s group. Each week, a group of 10-15 of us would bring essays or short stories and read them aloud to each other. I was new to the group, and actually, they were new to each other. Occasionally, someone would offer a valid critique, but usually we sat around and looked at each other, saying things like, “Nice characters,” or “I liked the introduction.”
The leader of the group was a published writer who sometimes offered helpful tidbits. She once told me that I needed more description of my characters. “I don’t know what they look like,” she said.
“I don’t either,” I probably told her. I’m not really a fiction writer. I just shared short stories with the group because I was too self-conscious to read out loud the real writing I was doing. The one week I did work up the nerve to read an essay about my moral dilemma to help homeless people while living in Chicago, one of the older men told me I was naive.
That was the last time I read any of my real writing in the group.
Working creatively in community probably does mean I need to let people read what I write. Developing this blog over the past few years has brought me a long way in my reticence to share my work. But what else?
My friend Amber and I met over dinner last week and bounced ideas off each other. She asked me to solve her narrating problems, and I asked her to show me how I could write full time. But we also asked each other real questions: what are you working on? What are your goals? What are you reading to help you grow as a writer? We’re going to participate in theHighCalling.org book discussion of Luci Shaw’s Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith together, and we plan to talk about what we are reading.
Ann and I also trying to figure out what a creative life together might look like. She’s married and home schools her four children; I am single and work full-time. But we each have a desire to write and do it in the context of community. So last week, we spent the afternoon together.
The first three hours we had lunch. It was a long, lingering lunch in which we discussed a hundred things besides writing. But almost without fail, the topic would come back there again and again. So by the time we hauled our laptops to a nearby coffee bar and set up shop over hot tea and a white chocolate mocha, writing was only natural. We worked a couple of hours: I wrote a blog post, Ann did some research. We talked along the way; we shared what we were working on.
When it was time to go and we were packing up, we wondered about the productivity of the day. Did we write well together? Would we want to do it again?
It wasn’t exactly like JoDee’s writing retreat, which she wrote about and depicted so beautifully last week. We didn’t have a whole week in a mountain home in Colorado. We didn’t see deer grazing out the window. But we did spend our afternoon writing, brainstorming ideas, sharing stories, eating, and exploring, just like JoDee and her friend. And we did get the same taste of what it means to do our creating together with the same goals in mind:
The most precious take-away I left this mountain retreat with was a renewed appreciation for the generous nature of God. I don’t need to have all of the answers concerning my future direction as a writer and artist. Today my heart fills with the wonder of creation and gratefulness for the blessings I received, JoDee wrote.
Ann and I might have gotten a lot more writing done if we had not spent three hours on lunch and did not keep interrupting each other over the laptop screens. We might have gotten more writing done, but we would not be better writers.
For that, we need each other.
What about you? Who are you collaborating with? What does it look like for you to create with people?
Interested in writing in community? Here are some ways to join others in online writing projects:
*Beginning Monday, July 18, theHighCalling.org will begin a new book club around Luci Shaw’s Breath for the Bones: Art, Imagination and Spirit: A Reflection on Creativity and Faith. Buy the book or pick it up at the library, read the first couple of chapters, and prepare to blog about your response.
*TS Poetry is working on writing sestinas in July. Sestinas are a type of form poetry with six stanzas of six lines and repeating end words. I started a sestina about vacations, but it was too much work! I think I will try again on a less relaxing topic. Sestinas are challenging, but worth the effort.
*Join Bonnie Gray for her Thursday JAMS as she throws out a topic and invites her readers to write in community, with link ups and every thing!
*TS Poetry is working on writing sestinas in July. Sestinas are a type of form poetry with six stanzas of six lines and repeating end words. I started a sestina about vacations, but it was too much work! I think I will try again on a less relaxing topic. Sestinas are challenging, but worth the effort.
*Join Bonnie Gray for her Thursday JAMS as she throws out a topic and invites her readers to write in community, with link ups and every thing!
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Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective.
Each Thursday, consider going “There and Back Again” yourself. It’s simple.
Photo by by rocknroll_guitar, via Flickr, used with permission under the Creative Commons License.
Charity,
I love brainstorming how to write with you. I can’t wait to see how it will all work out.
Ann – Your desire to talk to everyone is even more evident that you are a natural collaborator. I love all the encouragement and motivation you offered there in the comments.
Sheila – I would LOVE to be your neighbor! We could borrow sugar from each other and write in the evenings! But if that doesn’t work out, let’s help each other as writers anyway. You have been a big encouragement to me already!
Nancy – You bring up a good point about how we can help each other but most of us are just too “nice” to do real good. How can we change that? Is it wrapped up in the fact that we writers identify so closely with what we write? For years, I’ve always assumed that if someone doesn’t like my writing it means they hate me! 🙂 Imagine telling me that my sentences are too long. It would be like spitting on me!
I think collaboration involves humility on both sides.
Bradley – Yours sounds like a realistic approach to a creative life in which you also work doing something else. I need to find contentment with that model more rather than kicking against the goads. I have also said that the more I write, the more God gives me to write about. Even if I still sit at a desk somewhere else for 8 hours a day.
Maurice – Hi there! I am so glad you joined along here because you are my inspiration for collaboration. Seriously.
Everyone – Maurice even hosts an annual writing conference at his house for other writers in his genre, and it wildly popular.
You know, I think I need to follow you around a little more and see how your collaboration works. (Remember our writing outings back in the day? Those were so fun.)
Kay – great point about being creative to be creative. I think I might have too romantic a vision of “the creative life.” See, I even use quotes when I talk about it! I think the creative life is much more about bringing creativity to the trenches than about sitting around writing memoirs in a coffee shop with friends. (That’s what I WISH my creative life were like!)
What great thoughts you all have!
Megan, I LOVE that you are part of a writing group. I’ve always wondered how my group experience might have changed if I had been brave enough to be real.
It always takes me longer than expected to get my There & Back Again posts ready, but mine’s finally published. It’s a little quirky, but that’s no surprise.
If I may be so bold, I find myself wanting to chat with everyone in the comments. Is that presumptuous?
Megan, I’m so glad you have a group that works. Whenever I’ve been in writing groups, it just…well, doesn’t (work, that is). I did not feel this way when I was out with Charity, however. It seemed to work.
Kay, I agree with you–sometimes we have to be creative to be creative, and satisfy ourselves with online opportunities.
Maurice, you sound like a Super Artist, ideas spilling out in all directions! Love it!
Bradley, you’re DEFINITELY a writer, and the discipline now will pay off later, if/when you decide to do more. But sometimes I wonder if the blogging IS the more? Maybe? Or maybe you’ve already written the draft of a book, were you to cruise through your archives?
Nancy, one thing I’ve learned from L.L. Barkat when working with writers is to emphasize what’s working. By pointing out what’s working, I automatically reveal what’s not working. So the overall emphasis is positive, but the honesty is there by default.
Sheila! I’ve seen snapshots of your neighborhood, and I know you requested Charity, but I would happily volunteer to move in next door! 🙂
Charity,
Now I want to be your neighbor.
I’ve been recognizing the need for community (yes, I have found community here, but I crave the over-coffee, face-to-face kind).
I’m thinking that I’m drowning in my own inertia and need to DO something about it.
Thanks for the nudge.
I really enjoyed JoDee’s post about her writing retreat (even though I was the tiniest bit insanely jealous–it sounded heavenly!). I’ve been thinking about needing others to help me write better. As much as I enjoy getting feedback from fellow bloggers, it tends to be–do I dare say it out loud–all nice. Sometimes I think I need a writing Simon Cowell in my life to say the hard things to me like, “What is it with you and the run-on sentences,” and “Didn’t anyone ever teach you where the commas are supposed to go?” Don’t get me wrong–I love the encouraging feedback I’ve found among blog friends. But sometimes I feel safer sharing my writing here than offering it to someone who will say the hard things to me.
Charity, what a great idea. I don’t really collaborate much, except for the annual writers retreat at Laity Lodge. to be honest, I’m still not sure if I am a “writer” or not. I do it because it brings me joy, and now I have this little gig as an editor at High Calling, which forces a little discipline to it. I used to have higher aspirations (book, fame, money, etc), but now I am very happy with the little routine of blogging, editing, and sharing with this writing community I’ve found through The High Calling and other blogging friends. Maybe I’ll do more when I retire from my real job, which I also enjoy very much.
I do get together regularly with another blogger friend, and we sometimes talk about writing, but we mostly just get together to be friends.
I do collaborations all the time. To be honest, it helps me juggle a lot of balls at a time. I co-wrote a creative non-fiction book with a pastor. I wrote a children’s book to be illustrated by an artist I met at First Fridays. I am in two local writing groups. And I am in a collaborative artist group (people come from different disciplines, from acting to painting to dance to music to writing and we pitch ideas and see what collaboration would look like). It’s great to just throw yourself into it and see what happens.
JoDee and I had a GREAT week, but it was by no means normal for us! Like JoDee, I haven’t found a local group of writers to collaborate with. It’s been fun to work with her online and through our week away. You have to be creative to be creative. Know what I mean?
My writing group has been essential to me! We talk a lot, too, but that’s part of the creative process. Glad you and Ann got together again.