A Love Letter to My People

On revisiting a classic and discovering community

At the outset of the new year I decided to check off an item on my “to-do” list that had been lingering around for years. The Artist’s Way was a book that got floated into conversations by a lot of English majors of my day, considered by many as necessary reading for creatives, but I only heard snippets and sound bytes about it. I’d never actually picked the book up myself.

So, at the beginning of this year, I decided to host an Artist’s Way book study here at Nooks. I told myself that I wanted to have my own experience with Cameron’s technique, find out what all the hubbub was about. But secretly, I was hoping to satisfy an item on my own personal wish list that also had been lingering around for decades.

Through the years I heard different writer friends talk about their beloved “writers’ group.” They met regularly and shared their work and their dreams, sharpened their skills together, probably braided each other’s hair and promised to be godparents to each other’s offspring.

I wanted this, the godparenting and all. Okay, maybe not the hair braiding because I’m kind of picky about people touching my hair, but I wanted that deep level of intimacy with other writers who were on this creative journey with me. For the long run.

Sometimes when you want one thing, you have to lure people in with another thing altogether. So I advertised my “Artist’s Way Book Study” as a bi-monthly gathering that would extend over the course of 14 weeks. Together, we’d glean from Cameron’s legendary book, get our creative craft kick-started for the new year, and go our separate ways. No long-term commitments. No pacts to sign in blood. But in the tender recesses of my heart, a little flame flickered with hope. Perhaps, just perhaps, this would become my writers’ group. My peeps.

So I waited.

The sign-ups came slowly at first.

Okay, okay...they actually didn’t come at all. My husband casually suggested the possibility of doing an online version of the group instead; it might be a more convenient option for people and we could cast our net wider to folks who didn’t live in the area.

I bristled.

I want to see these people in real time, I thought. Feel them sitting beside me. Smell their coffee breath. See the sleep boogers in their eyes. I need to be with people. Besides, how would we do hair braiding on Zoom? I was even willing to overlook my squeamishness about mutual hair love if it meant I could be with other writers. I was desperate.

Thankfully, the sign-ups slowly began trickling in till our group was tipping the scale at almost a dozen. I was thrilled. And a teensy bit scared. What if we didn’t gel? What if after all the years of hype I’d heard, the book was a dud? What if people didn’t take it seriously? What if they took it too seriously? Good gracious, it’s hard work putting oneself out there in the world, admitting that we want to do a thing, asking others to join us in it, and then somehow making it work.

Well, my fears were completely unfounded. The group gathered on the second Saturday of January, and well, it was love at first sight. These were my people. They were moms and grandmas and brothers and sisters and full-time employees and wildly unsure of their writing ability and somewhat confident in it and, best of all, these people were transparent. If there is a trait I love best in the world, it’s transparency. I don’t have patience for hiding things behind polished masks or on the other side of a shiny smile or inside an oversized t-shirt. Let’s just be who we are and be it together.

Turns out, my peeps felt the same way. Because four months into it now, we just can’t stop meeting. Some of us show up bleary-eyed on Saturdays, barely stumbling in the front door of the shop, not having read a single word from the assigned chapters, while others bounce in with pages highlighted and ideas to discuss. And I think I can speak for the group in saying that we found so much value in our study of The Artist’s Way, but we found even more value in company of each other.

So we’re sticking together. We decided that there’s still more we want to learn and we want to learn it side by side. On June 7^th we’re beginning Maggie Smith’s newest book Dear Writer, and if you are in search of a group of creatives to join and love, here’s your invitation. Journey with us. Learn with us. Show up as you are and get ready to be appreciated for it. And as of yet, hair braiding hasn’t made an appearance...but I’m not making any promises.

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For details about this new group, head over to our Book Club page!