The Importance of Community

Image courtesy of Sagebrush Photography (Creative Commons)

Today’s guest post is by Michelle Woodman. Michelle blogs at This Time Around, often about whatever is running through her brain at the moment. She lives in southern Alberta, Canada, with her husband Jeff, their cat, and numerous fish. You can follow her on Twitter and/or check out her Facebook page. 

I hit a tough spot this past November – think Wil E. Coyote and the edge of a cliff – with the whole “writing thing”. It wasn’t great timing as I was in the midst of NaNoWriMo, was still updating my blog regularly, and had begun the previous month the work of framing a book idea. Shoot, I had even declared (after much wrestling) I was a bona-fide writer.

But all that busyness, all those confessions did not silence the questions of what I should write, if I should be writing at all, and what it was God wanted me to write. All those have been Day One questions for me, but last November in particular, those doubtful words were bruising my heart.

I seriously considered calling it quits in hopes of having a respite. I could pack up my notebooks, delete my collection of Word documents, and pack up all writing-related material and find something else to do. Like knitting. Or becoming a professional surfer of the World Wide Web.

Before I made any such decisions, however, I decided to share my doubts and fears with an online writing community I am a part of, a place where I knew I could safely lay down at least some of my burden. And what I received from this group of writers was what I needed the most: The listening ears of people who had been or currently were in the same storm-tossed boat I found myself in.

And listen they did, along with offering encouragement and virtual hugs with assurances I was not alone.

For as solitary of an act as writing can be (and must be to a degree), being a part of a community of writers is an important and necessary thing.  The community at Writers Unite helped me see I was not alone, I was not a failure, and that I could slog through this self-doubt and start stringing words together once again.

Sometimes the best thing, the most encouraging thing, is to simply know you are not alone.