Until recently, I was a member of an online writing group. I had been for years. But I had to leave. It was driving me quite stupid.
The format of the group was based on critiques but for some time it was much more than that. Perhaps there is some significance to the period in which I joined (a month or two before four planes took a nosedive and the West went insane) but it became a lifeline of sorts for me. There was feedback and encouragement for my writing, naturally; but with members in the UK, throughout Europe, Africa, US, Israel, the Lebanon and more, it also felt like there was a real international community; something that almost felt like friendship.
But some communities have a habit of setting themselves up as victims for inexplicable reasons. They bubble with resentment; members poke at each other; and they fracture. Such was the path of this one.
Towards the end of 2007, members started complaining about the chances of being read; about how it's more difficult for writers now than it has ever been. This from a group where precious few members even bothered to submit. These comments came at a time when I was feeling uncommonly positive about my scribblings. I'd been working hard at it, pushing myself to find some exposure (not least here and here), collating work for submission and, most importantly, writing more words per week than I've ever managed before*, some of which is quite good.
So there I was, feeling positive, feeling as though I might call myself a writer in habit at least, and I found myself surrounded by a gaggle of naysayers all agreeing that 2008 is a bad time to be a writer, so what's the point of typing/writing/imagining/thinking. Hell, what's the point of breathing? I countered that by saying surely they're mistaken. Has there ever been a better time to write than now?
For starters there are more literate people on the planet than there have ever been. That means more readers (it obviously also means more writers, hence more competition, but is that a reason not to scribble?). And more than that I think I could argue successfully (perhaps in another post) that many audiences have become more sophisticated. Numerous media have paved the way for that, if you're prepared to write outside the proverbial box - from TV and film to music and popular culture, we're allowed to break rules and invent our own conventions.
And this, I said, was all before you considered the possibilities of self-promotion. OK, so the world sends you a rejection letter. Fine. Be dejected for a day or two. But on day three chuck your rejected masterpiece up on here (or similar) and join the likes of Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman and William Blake who chose to publish their own work. The difference is that today you can do it for free and you don't commit to a print run.
Bad time to be a writer? Where, I asked, is the problem?
Oh but, they answered. But but. But that was as far as they got.
There were some talented writers in that group. A few at any rate. But they chose to get caught up in the remorse and self-pity. The golden age of the writer is over, they sang in unison. The biros of the world have vanished. MS Word won't open. We're doomed.
So I screamed at them "Save the self pity" and left. Actually I didn't scream. It was email-based so screaming didn't work. In fact I didn't even write it. But I thought it. And then I left.
So here I am, a little later, alone. And the frightening thing I've realised is that since 2001 much of what I wrote took that group into consideration in its ingredients. How will they respond to this? What will they think of that? Will any of them understand...etc? But now I feel like the bit in the original Star Wars when R2-D2's restraining bolt is removed and a distorted hologram crackles to life. Maybe now I'm ready to unleash my inner princess.
Go Carrie.
What?
* - [[...writing more words per week than I've ever managed...]] - partly thanks to a brainwave a few months ago that I should partition my week and work out daily how much time I can devote to my stuff (five hundred words a day some days, running into four figures on others); but mostly thanks to a ridiculously understanding partner, without whom I wouldn't even have a favourite pen, let alone time to use it.