Writing Communities

Writer Laurie Elmquist stopped by my house today to give me a card to congratulate me on some recent good writing news. It was a lovely gesture, and I appreciated it a lot. I opened the card and put it on my mantle where I can look at it for the next week or so, and then we went out for a walk with our dogs.

After our walk I came back to the card because I had started to appreciate it more deeply. The card was a lovely gesture from a generous friend, but it was also something more. The reason Laurie knew in the first place that I had writing news is that we write together. We walk and talk about writing, we shop and talk about writing, we drink tea and talk about writing. If we are together, we are probably talking about writing. We both write, and we both teach writing. And we are part of a larger group too--the Wildwood writers.

The Wildwood writers is a group of women who have been writing together for years, through many rejections and false starts, and yet we continue to write and we continue to write together. And the truth that I realised when looking at my card today, is that it's not despite the rejections and false starts that we stay together, it's because of them. Because we need each other. Writing is hard hard work, and it takes a long time, and most of us would have given up long ago if it weren't for the Wildwood writers meeting each week and listening to our tales and our writing.

So thank you to Laurie for always being there for me and for bringing me a beautiful card, and to the Wildwood writers, without whom I would most definitely no longer be a writer.