Shrinking Your Audience

Why writers need readers more than they need a "readership."

For the whole month of August, these Tuesday letters will be on the subject of writing in community, pushing back against the idea that writing is solitary work—or, I should say, I’ll be pushing back against the idea that writing is only solitary work. Of course you have to get alone with your thoughts. But, for me at least, that necessary solitude is sustainable only if it is an interlude in a life of connection with other people.

Starting next week I’ll have more to say about starting and sustaining writers’ groups. But today, I have a couple of anecdotes that illustrate a foundational principle that will inform everything else I say this August about writing in community: Writing for specific people—people whose names you know—restores the joy and connection that you need to finish the work.

Anecdote 1: Sally and The Charlatan’s Boy
It took me almost two years to write The Charlatan’s Boy. For much of that two-year span I was in a whirl-hole of despair, completely unable to move forward. I mostly knew where the story was going, but when I sat down to write it, I just couldn’t make the sentences.

After I had missed I don’t know how many deadlines and deadline extensions, I got an email from an acquaintance named Sally, who had been an enthusiastic reader of my Wilderking books. It was a short email, and it just said that the Wilderking books had done her a lot of good, and that she needed The Charlatan’s Boy. She said she’d be praying for me as I pushed toward the finish line. There was nothing pushy or shaming about her note; it was just a kind reminder that The Charlatan’s Boy wasn’t one-man show of tragedy and heartache. That one email shook something loose. I started back writing that day and wrote straight through to the end, knowing that Sally needed what I could bring.

Before Sally’s email I had a sense of a “readership” that liked my swampy stories and might like to see another one. But a readership is an abstraction. You would think that a person of imagination would be able to picture and be motivated by the young, enthusiastic readers who made up my “readership.” Apparently not. What I needed at that moment was one un-abstract person with a name and a story to whom I could tell my story. Also, it didn’t hurt at all to know that Sally was praying for me.

Andy and The Terrible Speed of Mercy
In that same era of my life I was struggling with another book, a biography of Flannery O’Connor called The Terrible Speed of Mercy. I spent hours and hours of desk time thinking of people who were more qualified for the task than I, then wondering what they would think of my book if they read it. I also spent more hours than I would care to count wondering what Flannery O’Connor would think.

At the time I was in a lunchtime bowling league with Andy Osenga (Andy, by the way, has recently relaunched his podcast, The Pivot, that you absolutely have to listen to). Andy asked what kind of book I was writing, and I told him it was a book for intelligent, well-read Christians who had heard they were supposed to like Flannery O’Connor but could never quite managed to do so. Andy said that described him exactly.

So when I went back to my desk that afternoon, instead of wondering what the “real” Flannery O’Connor scholars would think about my book, or, worse, fearing that they would never think about my book one way or another, I wrote some things I thought Andy ought to know about Flannery O’Connor. And the next morning I wrote some more things for Andy. And I kept on that way until I had written a whole book.

Like a lot of writers, I am prone to ricochet back and forth between a sense of isolation on the one hand and, on the other hand, visions of imaginary readers that are sometimes grandiose, sometimes terrifying. Staying connected to actual human beings who take an interest in your work—people in whom you can also take an interest—can ground you in reality, pull you out of that whirl-hole of self, and put you on the path toward good work.

Starting next week, more on the specifics of starting and maintaining a writers’ group.

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• Virtual Writing Rooms on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

• This morning: Historical Fiction Group

• This afternoon and this evening: Campfire Stories (Read-alouds from Short Story Summer Camp)

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In this episode, Sara Bannerman, Jan Cooper, and Mandy Link read personal narratives in which they leave home and find themselves in situations where the stakes were higher than they realized. Sara Bannerman recalls being a young girl put in an unsettled and unsettling situation. Jan Cooper wins a writing prize and has reason to wish she hadn’t won. And Mandy Link tells of a time when an incident on a familiar running trail gave her reason to reassess many areas of her life.

“Leaving Home Stories,” is a special summer series in which writers from The Habit Membership read personal narratives on the theme of leaving home, literally or metaphorically, temporarily or permanently.

Sponsored by The Habit Membership.

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