Community

For a long time, probably ever since I finished my MA 12 years ago, I have been longing to be part of a creative writing community. It is pretty hard to write in isolation. It's also pretty hard for someone with increasing social anxiety, long emerged from the student-bubble, now firmly ensconced in a stay-at-home-mum-bubble, to pluck up to courage to venture out to meet groups of strangers, especially ones who might ask you to read out the poem you've just made up.

A few years ago, I joined Twitter. The impulse was not, admittedly, a literary one - I wanted to get a refund from a rather large company. Twitter worked in that instance. In the time since, it has presented me with quite a few good writing tips and contacts. Helpful as this has been, I have still not felt 'part' of a writing community.

Now in lockdown, much of life seems to have moved online. There have been online literary festivals, online writing retreats, online book launches... Still, I did not feel able to access much of this. As many of us have now discovered, attending an event on Zoom can create anxiety for even the most extrovert person. So, I was stuck: desperately desiring community, yet not sure how I'd ever find it, especially while locked down.

Two things have happened, for which I am extremely grateful. And for which I should also credit Twitter, without which I wouldn't have heard of them.

The first. Michael Loveday, a writer and writing mentor, picked up on the fact that many writers seemed to be finding it hard to get any writing done amidst the global pandemic. He set up a free online course “Unlocked in Lockdown: Slouch to 5k (for writers)”. For the first couple of hundred people to respond, there was a chance to join a Facebook group. Suddenly, I found myself on a writing course, and in a virtual community, where I am taken seriously as a writer (alongside other people I recognise from Twitter as 'proper' writers). I'm halfway through the course, and I've begun my first piece of creative nonfiction writing, which is about my Great-Gran's experience of raising young children during the German Occupation of Guernsey during WW2. I'll blog about this soon.

The second. I saw a tweet about a free online course called MumWrite, and thought I'd register my interest. I was asked to complete an application, and I realised that this was quite a serious undertaking. The last few things I've applied for, or submitted to, have not lead anywhere, so I was trying to prepare myself for a polite 'no'... but thankfully I was selected. It's a development course funded by Arts Council England, for mums who 'write experimental short fiction or poetry, or would like to write more experimentally'. I'm firmly in the second group currently, but in a couple of months will have moved into the first. And, there will be publication opportunities...

So, unlikely as it sounds, one of the things lockdown has brought me is community.