It Takes a Village to Write a Book
March 31, 2023 | Sean Morrissey Carroll
There was a time when lords and dukes would pay an old man to live on their property in a ramshackle stone cottage, composing poetry and entertaining guests. The hermit would receive room and board and be expected to come up with witty sayings, touching stories, and observations on the world. All this supposedly came from their lonely place in the wilderness—an island of creativity, a font of wisdom—in a world moving faster every day.
Of course, this was just a myth. The hermits were actually actors memorizing others’ words. They lived in the comforts of the manor and when guests would visit, they would hustle out to their stone cottage and make themselves up as homely and disheveled. Today we see the same myth playing out in the public perception of authors, as if their genius springs forth from their cranium, fully formed, to be scribbled onto the page with all haste.
Where do we get the notion that the author is a singular entity? That bestselling books stand head-and-shoulders above their contemporaries through sheer originality? I blame the Romantics, of course. From William Blake to Byron to Keats the idea of the author as a genius took hold, replacing earlier scholarly ideals of authorship in context. To the Romantics, an author was merely a vessel for the intensity of their emotions, examining the interiority of their own mind. External influences were discounted, even as these authors listened to and learned from each other and had serious classical educations that left indelible imprints on their writing.
Shakespeare and Hugo, Orwell and Plath, the filter of history brings us tales of writers who toiled endlessly in service of their art. But we may not learn about the theater culture Shakespeare was embedded in, the miasma of intellectuals and artists Hugo bounced ideas off of, the endless revisions with editors that Orwell went through, or the tight-knit group of poets that Sylvia Plath engaged with through meetings and letters.
Today we live in a world of Zoom calls and binge-watched television shows, of isolation in the big city and blocking people on social media. But we are no closer as writers to being an island than our forebears ever were. We need each other as a community, as partners in creative construction, and as reviewers and feedback-givers maybe now more than ever.
Creating Your Writing Community
If we can dispel with the idea of the author as a singular person, then what is the author, actually? An author is a collection of the actions from the time they pick up a pen, and perhaps even further back than that, up until today. An author is friends, family, colleagues, beta readers, editors, proofreaders, marketers, artists, and readers. An author is all of those things and if you don’t believe me just go look at the Acknowledgements in the back of any published novel.
So, how do you build your writing community? Here are a few ways to connect with other authors:
Read. Every writer is a reader. Read deeply in your genre and widely across anything that strikes your interest. Even if you love the classics take a dip in contemporary fiction. See how new takes on old tropes are being contextualized for readers today. Take a chance on a poetry book, grab an indie comic book with a wild cover, read something completely against type just to see how the other side does it.
Give and receive feedback. writers share their writing with others. Don’t go submitting a dozen stories to journals without at least a little feedback from someone whose opinion you trust. Whether it is a friend you’ve known for years or anonymous feedback on the internet through a message board, try and try again. You’ll find your niche. Take your time to learn to give honest yet balanced feedback, and to expect it in return.
Find writers where you are. Whether it is online or in-person there are opportunities to interact with aspiring writers in your genre. Even if not, there are often opportunities for writers of different genres to gather and socialize, or even to share and read their work. Poetry readings and arts organizations are good places to engage with your local community, even if you don’t feel like sharing yourself. Give kudos where they are deserved, support your peers, and attend educational lectures if they interest you.
Volunteer. Small organizations can always use help with events and publications. There may be opportunities that can deepen your writing practice like slush pile review, editing, graphic design, and board member opportunities. These types of volunteer opportunities can pay dividends beyond their immediate impact. A writer can make contacts that can mean growing together as a community for years to come.
Submit your work. Start with pitching a few magazine articles, submitting a story or fifteen to literary journals, and watch the rejections pour in. A thin skin will not make it far in this game. Submission requires a high tolerance for rejection, at every level. If you’ve ever had a first date that went well yet ended in a ghosting or swift block of your phone number, get ready to have your disappointment raised exponentially.
The point of the submissions is to put a few more lines on your resume. And with persistence and perseverance your list of publications will grow. You may even find that you’d like to write regularly for a publication you enjoy. Whether fiction or non-fiction, this will bring you contacts that (like volunteering for literary organizations) can be a valuable part of building community for you and others.
Go to Conventions. Conventions can be a great way to expand your reach to other authors, as well as an opportunity to meet agents and editors in a casual space without the weight of your words hanging between you. Having a pitch meeting buried within a slew of other authors all hungrily vying for validation is one thing, but having the chance to meet and greet decision makers is a great opportunity for an author that takes the pressure off of what can be a stressful situation in the best of times.
In-person conventions can be expensive, and there is no reason to think that this is a necessary step. Between travel and hotels and exorbitant fees a standard convention can run upwards of a thousand dollars for less than a week of hobnobbing and eating stale breakfast buffet pastries. Online conventions can be a suitable substitute at a much reduced rate, and their expansion in the past few years has become a valuable resource for writers the world over. Find the one that fits your genre, your demographic, or even your personal or political identity. There are hundreds to choose from.
In meeting and growing with a community of writers you may find the beta readers and review groups that can give you a solid foundation as you go through the process from first draft to polished manuscript. Collaboration, learning and succeeding together through a shared set of goals, is the ultimate goal of a circle of writers who may even mimic, copy, and bounce off of each other’s works.
Reusing, recycling, and revising your own work is an important part of any writer’s process. This is more internal than other prescriptions may be, but the interplay of collaborating with other writers can be a place where you find what ideas in your novel partially work, what has the spark of an idea that can come back later, or when you are chasing a rabbit down a hole (but what a beautiful setting you’ve built, perhaps). As the Greek scholar Seneca said, “We should follow… the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in.”
These buzzing bees working in concert (one of them being you) are far stronger as a group than on their own. And just like building a community, or growing a family, it takes time. Be easy on yourself as you grow your writing, as it takes shape and grows sweeter. It may take years to bring a book to publication. It may take decades. The point is to enjoy yourself as you trudge the happy road of destiny, and try your best along the way. At some point you’ll be ready to publish your manuscript, and here you’ll meet a whole new cadre of villagers that help to create the author, to make it a name on a book cover.
Creating Your Publishing Community
The first person that may leap to mind when an author seeks to publish a novel is an agent, and while they will make an appearance, it unfortunately may not be soon. Certainly, you can go for a round of queries or two with a manuscript in tow, but it may help to have some more lines on your resume and names to throw around in an email before you take the plunge. This is where the contacts you’ve made and works you’ve published will come in handy. Once you have those, it’s a good time to take the biggest step you’ve had so far—which will turn out to be just the smallest big step you’ll take moving forward. It’s time to query.
Getting an agent may end up easy for you. There’s always the chance. But, more likely than not, querying will be nerve-wracking, time-consuming, and full of disappointment. You want to land an agent that you can work with, get along with, and grow your career with. Along the way there will be countless emails, follow-ups, and rejections. There will be partial requests, full requests, requests for revisions, revise-and-resubmits, and maybe even a yes that becomes a no.
And then, when the seas calm, you may find yourself with a beautiful manuscript… that will then be torn to shreds and sewn back together by your agent or their colleagues. But remember, they’re on your side. Your trust in your agent is fundamental to the ability to have your manuscript picked up by a publishing house, potentially even by one of the Big Five publishers (well, by the time you read this it may be the Big Four or Big Three. We’ll see).
This will be the perfect time to lean on your writing community. To complain to your critique group, to kvetch to your beta readers, to cry into a pillow and lament the loss of control over your manuscript (which was made by the village to begin with, so you’ll have to get over it at some point). Your agent will be using their own community to poke and prod and see where your story fits into the great macrocosm of the publishing world. They’ll be leaning on contacts and sweet-talking old colleagues, all in the interest of getting your manuscript changed into a book.
Soon enough you’ll be entertaining offers, looking at numbers, and reading contracts that may affect your life for years to come. And when you decide on which offer to accept and get over the euphoria of getting a check for the first time, there will be more changes. You’ll dive back into your story again as the publishers’ editor, copy editor, and proofreader get ahold of your manuscript and perform precision surgery once again on what you thought, for the second or third time, was a completed manuscript.
Then you’ll meet graphic designers, artists, and typesetters. There will be formatters, warehouse workers, shipping companies, and booksellers along the way. And then one day, when you should be expecting it, a box of Advance Reader Copies will be Fedexed to your front door, where you can once again celebrate them with everyone you’ve met along the way. Your village, your tribe, your team, your countrymen of letters; this could not have happened without them.
Parting Thoughts
A book takes a village, and a writer is not an island. If you have aspirations for writing a book, the first step may not be intuitive. For all that may be on your table (and keeping your life together during all of this may be an even bigger fish to fry) the writing is not even the half of it. Job number one is putting words on the page, but the way a book comes together takes more people than you may realize. Take your time, measure your steps, and take the first one today.