May I have several hours of your time?

Would you mind reading this poem and letting me know what you think?

What about this essay? This chapbook? This epic? This novel trilogy?

Writers often get hit up for advice. Writers who teach are especially targeted for this. We know the look—the hopeful smile when a student approaches us with a sheaf of papers and a request.

I used to sport that same smile. I remember asking every professor I had to read my work. They didn’t even have to be English professors. As an undergraduate, I was looking for praise. As a grad student, I wanted affirmation and further challenges. A lot of good people gave me a lot of good time—time they could have spent doing many other things.

And that’s really the issue. When we ask fellow writers to devote time to our work, we are tacitly asking them to devote a little less time to their own. This is something that instructors have to come up with strategies to deal with, or the demands can be overwhelming. But this is also something that all practicing writers need to think about—how to contribute to their community without taking too much time away from our own creative production.

When writers receive a request for feedback, refusing can make them appear unkind. What a requestor may not realize is how many people make the same ask, and how much time it takes to really do justice to a piece of writing—to read, to comment, to discuss. And obviously, quiet time is precious, particularly to writers who work or have families. 

Time spent with another writer’s early drafts is time a writer is not writing her own. It is also lost reading time, and by this I mean time devoted to reading finished, polished, published work—something that is impossible to stay on top of, although this is a task that every writer must try to do.

When the requestor is a good friend, we almost always make time. When the person is a friendly acquaintance, we usually find time for them, too. But often, the people who are asking for our effort—sometimes hours of it—are near strangers to us. As we progress in our writing careers, these people may be actual strangers, people who know us only from the page. 

We often hear stories of literary figures from the past who wrote to their idols for support. Major writers nurtured their protege pen pals, sometimes for a whole lifetime. There is precedent for the request, precedent for the generosity offered in return—in fact, many of our best-loved writers are people we know because a volunteer mentor held their hand in the early going.

I recently taught an introductory writing class with an aspiring fantasy novelist on the roster. The guy was prolific and dealt in every genre. Every week included a new request for feedback—a new story or novel chapter, a new essay or poem.

I am not a professor at this student’s university; I am an adjunct English instructor, the lowest-ranking and lowest-paid instructional staff member at the institution. I get about $2,800 before taxes to teach that student’s class, a cohort of twenty-four who write up to three drafts of five essays. I read and comment on their work, and I also plan for classes, have meetings, spend time on e-mailing and record-keeping, and more. I figured out that I make about $15 per hour before taxes, with no benefits, for the work I do. The student probably doesn’t understand that I’m not in one of those cushy professorships that conservative lawmakers always deride. I’m the working poor—like many adjunct instructors, undercompensated for my expertise.

I think it’s fair to say that I have more than the average amount of affection for my students, and I have unusually strong zeal for my subject matter. I don’t refuse a Composition I student who comes to me with evidence of his similar passion in his hand. So many of the goals of the class can be addressed through their creative work—matters like audience awareness, grammar and mechanics, development. 

What I have noticed throughout my teaching career is that students consider this kind of feedback to be part of an instructor’s job description. They don’t hesitate to ask, and they see it as evidence of their commitment to the subject they teach.

And they are right. A writing student who goes the extra mile—the extra marathon—to draft a novel is a very special person who has earned some extra attention.

As writers, I think we should be cautious about asking each other for time and feedback. I also think we should exercise a few strategies to protect our time when people we don’t know well ask for our assistance with their work. Here are some ideas we can do to keep other people’s writing from interfering with our own:

Set a target. A good community member gives back, and helping other writers in this way is an exercise in literary citizenship. So we might decide that we’re going to work with a certain number of writers—one a month, one a year, six over the summer, etc. Any ask received after that should be encouraged to try getting on our schedule the following year.

Set a price. If writers value our input, they may be willing to pay for it. We might try setting a price for our services as a way of safeguarding our time. If a mentoring relationship develops, we can rethink the money part.

Set a schedule. Can we afford to give the first Monday of every month to other writers? Let the requestor wait until then, and stick to that plan; don’t let the project carry over or linger, but instead do what you can in the time you allocate.

Schedule ourselves first. This is not what we learned in church, but it’s important to be a little selfish with our writing time. For a request that comes while we’re working on a project, we can simply say that we’re focused on that project, and that the writer should ask again in a few weeks or months. If we do say this and the writer remembers to follow through, we should think about making time for them.

Find a faster way. If a writer hands us a novel, there is nothing that says we have to read a whole novel. We can give feedback on the opening few pages instead. When we’re handed a poetry collection, we don’t need to give close readings to all of the poems; we can instead look at something like the way form operates over the course of the book.

Recommend other outlets. It’s good to have at hand a list of favorite coaches, local workshops, or online services that you can suggest to give the writer the help they need.

Say yes—mindfully. Although strangers and acquaintances are hard to accommodate, I actually love reading the work of my writing friends. Occasionally, I find that I’m so busy with my work and family life that this kind of extra project can fall by the wayside, even though I have the will to do it. Lately I have started to set deadlines for myself for those writers I agree to work with. I put deadlines for feedback on my calendar, and I ask each friend to give me a nudge if I forget. 

Say no. Some of us struggle with this, but it’s OK to refuse requests of our time and attention, and we don’t even have to give a reason. As writers, we need to protect our creative time, and it’s very poor form to miss a standing appointment with our muse. If we are serious about what it is we do, we have to put our writing first.

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Writing community doesn't need to include workshopping

Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein and at 27 rue de Fleurus, the Stein salon  

Writing is a solitary—and holy—act. But that doesn’t mean writers don’t benefit from the bonds of community, a topic I’ve been writing a lot about lately. 

Community takes many forms. I’ve written in some detail about local writing events, which, when they occur with regularity, can do much to cement the bonds among writers. 

Beyond literary happenings, a lot of writers love and depend on their writing groups. These may include formal workshops or, for those who are bypassing or finished with a formal writing education, a close group of writer friends who trade and comment on new work. I’ll bet these informal groups are a lot of fun, when it’s the right bunch—and it must be nice to have someone, or a few someones, who really know our writing goals and help us to recognize them so that we can focus our efforts to reach them.

I’ve never really been in a regular writing group, and I doubt I’d be much good to one. I’d be the person leading the conversation off track, or cracking wise, or doing any number of things to distract us from our purpose. If cocktail wieners are simmering, there’s no question about it—I’m eyeballing those wieners.

I think the reason I shy away from feedback groups is pretty straightforward: I don’t want feedback. And further, I’ve grown to resent the default position the declares readers to be de facto workshoppers.

The fact is that I’m not a fan of workshopping. It’s a thing that served its purpose in my student days, but now I’ve reached a point where I trust my work and my voice, and the feedback I need most is a “yes” or “no” from an editor. I’ve never really used input to revise a particular piece anyway, past small line edits; generally, workshop input, for me, demonstrates how my work is received by an audience, or it informs the general direction of future work. 

While I welcome general opinions about my work—even negative ones, since not every attempt is a winner—I do not welcome uninvited suggestions for what to do to change my work. Something that is lost when we focus too much on workshopping is the ability to just be heard. I write poetry mostly, and I take my craft very seriously, but my poems are not craft projects. They are expressions. They come, sometimes, from my deepest self.

I hope my lack of desire for advice doesn’t read sensitivity. I’m really not thin skinned when it comes to my work. I’d prefer readers like my work, rather than dislike it, but either reaction is fine. The issue is that I find, more and more, that I just want to be heard—not fixed.

And isn’t that what community is—a group of people who listen and share and hear? Our very closest community members may be the ones we invite in for advice and counsel, but this isn’t necessarily true. Some people don’t want suggestions. Where my work is concerned, outside ideas, beyond finite suggestions of things like line edits, aren’t even usable, for the most part, because they are generally not in keeping with the way my work is born.

I guess that’s why I’m such a proponent of literary happenings—places where we can hear readings and have fun with language, maybe chow down on some finger foods. Sometimes community is about company in the journey—a sense that we’re not entirely alone, even though, as writers, this may be mostly true.

Literary community: Paying for what we value

Today’s post is the third in a three-part series. You can see the first part, on how reading factors into literary community, here, and the second part, on how regular local literary happenings cement community, here.

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The currency of community is friendship, common aspirations, goodwill.

But the currency of community is also currency—money, that is—and members of a community should strive to keep it flowing to support the things they claim to care about.

When a friend scores a book deal, congratulations flow, both in person and on social media. We tend to be happy for our fellow writers when they get a book contract, even if we’re also a little envious, because success for one suggests the possibility of success for others. At an even more basic level, a book contract means that there’s going to be a new book in the world, and that’s a beautiful thing.

So the currency of goodwill flows, even if some of it looks counterfeit. But the currency of money doesn’t move quite as freely, and it really needs to if the community is to thrive.

After the announcement of the book contract comes the post with a link for pre-sales. Literary titles rely heavily on advance sales, which help to determine the number of the initial press run. If all of those congratulatory friends put their money where their mouth is, a release gets a promising boost at the start, and the publisher can have a bit more confidence in the project it is investing in. But if congratulations end at the word, “Congratulations!,” and pre-sales don’t follow, a publisher may be more cautious with an initial order, and perhaps more cautious about promotion.

As a writer with three chapbooks and a full-length collection, I’ve received many kind words, and they really do warm me. But nothing feels quite as good as seeing my book in a friend’s hand, or hearing that a copy has arrived at someone’s doorstep. I was out of town recently and I met a friend for dinner, and at one point he pulled out my book for a signature. The friend is a voracious reader, but he doesn’t ordinarily gravitate toward poetry, but the book looked as though it had been read—the pages were fluffed out, the corners were curled. Nothing makes a writer feel more loved and appreciated than seeing a clear sign that someone has given time to her.

Friends should buy their friends’ books. Friends should read their friends’ books. And friends should spread the word about their friends’ books. That’s all pretty basic, and the reasons are obvious. When those friends are writers, too, the favor is likely to be returned at some point, but my own friend is not a guy with book aspirations; he’s just someone who cares about me, and this is how he enacted that care.

My friend is part of a community—one that includes him and me, our spouses, our mutual friends from our college days. And the people who celebrate each other’s accomplishments in person and on social media are also part of a community; they interact and communicate; they cheer and debate and share their indignation.

But beyond these specific communities is a larger community that is composed of readers and writers of new work. The members of this larger community may never meet or speak, although there is an instant kinship when we do encounter one another. This community is larger than our personal ones, but probably smaller than the community of, say, Star Wars aficionados or gun enthusiasts.

For the literary community to flourish, we need to fund it. It’s not crass to have this discussion; rather, at a time when the National Endowment for the Arts is targeted for elimination in the proposed federal budget, it could not be more urgent to talk about how we support a literary culture that is threatened by loss of public support.

Presses need our dollars if they are to produce the books we love to read. Likewise, literary journals, the proving ground of new writers, have to cover their expenses, and so do festivals, reading series, and the other literary institutions we love.

Today, like most days, I’m supporting the literary community by contributing to an ongoing conversation about what it means to live and work as a writer and a reader. I’m also starting to think about ways I can put my money where my heart is and support the presses and journals that carry the community on their backs.

And maybe after I’ve launched this post, I’ll head out to my local bookstore for a bit, or I’ll preorder a book by a friend, or I’ll just sit down outside on a beautiful day and I’ll read.