You absolutely need people in your corner. If you don't have access to actual people, a supportive writing community, they can be your favorite writers, your characters, anyone or anything that makes you feel more you, more a writer, less alone. I have stacks of books, talismans, rocks, sea-shells and art made by people I know and love. I am never alone. I am surrounded by the ghosts of dead authors, and millions of characters who I know as well as I know myself sitting next to me while I sip my tea and begin to write.
It's a solitary business. It's lonely. It's good that way too sometimes. But support in a world that doesn't take writing seriously (with rare exceptions), or art, or anything that isn't instantly covered in glitter and spray tan and sexy consumer buy me now on a billboard, is important.
For me, the people in my corner, include every teacher that ever told me I could write. It's
Raphael Jesus Gonzalez, writer, poet, painter, who taught creative writing at Laney who told me many years ago when I said I wanted to be a writer- you are already a fine writer. You are writing now. Keep going. He also used to say never be intimidated by the blank paper. Crumple it up. Coat it in ashes. Mark it up so that it's not so scary. I thought of that yesterday when I had a little writer's block and I picked a notebook page that already had notes messily scrawled on it and a crease towards the bottom.
People in my corner include every author I ever read who painted a different world for me than the one I had to live in, that taught me the possibilities of words, strung together into story and what they could do- how they could move me.
And now I have this rich lush experience of my fellow writers at
Dive-Deep with
Jen Cross and
Writing Ourselves Whole. This feeling of community and sharing and laughing and writing is the best thing I've ever tasted. Having the shared experience of sharing our 15 pages with terror and hope and waiting to see what will happen when we meet next is the best thing. To get feedback that is rich in precision and respect is amazing. To get support when we feel like giving up, like we can't write anything good, like we can't want what we want- is powerful. Empowering. That's what it is this people in my corner. I want you to have people in your corner too. Reading your words, telling you what they like about them, telling you when they got pulled out of the story a bit, telling you they can't wait to read what comes next. I want us all to have people in our corner until the world is full of corners that become circles that become all of us saying yes to writing, and art, and to women and to queers and to all of us, however we are, whoever we are. Yes I think that's Utopian and unrealistic but that's the other thing about people in your corner- they make you hopeful.
