With a respective ten- and eight-year age gap between my older two kids and my youngest, I frequently feel a disorienting sense of déjà vu as I watch the third child move through middle school. This happened a few weeks ago when I attended an annual school trip to a sleepaway camp tucked into the northwestern region of our home state, New Jersey. I’d been to the camp twice before, but it had been eight years since I’d last gone.

Though I hadn’t gone to sleepaway camp as a child, it seems the beauty of camp is the way it feels frozen in time. The smell of pine needles and pond water. The soft-warn wood floor and creaky screen door in the dining hall. The distant background noise of paddles thundering against metal canoes and splashing water. The false (but plausible) rumor, whispered among campers, that this is the place where Friday the Thirteenth was filmed.

This year, the week of the field trip coincided with the publication of a piece I’d written. So, between my shifts working in the kitchen, I eagerly checked HerStry’s site to see if my essay had gone live. Standing in the steam of the industrial dishwasher, hitting refresh, there it was: déjà vu.

Eight years ago, I’d just started writing regularly(ish). The last time I’d been to the camp, I’d newly started a blog and had posted my second entry that week. I was still feeling tentative about the whole sharing-my-writing-thing, and I remember being in the back of the camp kitchen nervously checking the blog for comments or reactions. 

The feeling was the same, yet different. When I thought about what had changed in my writing practice, or how I’d changed, I realized it came back to one thing: Community. At book inc, community is the game-changer. We talk about it a lot (like here) but I’ve been thinking about what that really means and how it’s changed me as a writer:

– I have trusted readers. Sometimes this means people in a writing class. But often it means choosing one or two writers who know my voice and style–they regularly read my work and I read theirs. These are readers who will ask thought-provoking questions, let me know what’s working, and where there might be opportunities in the writing to expand.

– Similarly, having a broad community of writers means having the right reader at the right time. There might be a specific person who I seek out to bounce ideas off of, perhaps because of their areas of interest/expertise, their writing experience, or their publication history.

– We share resources. Of the handful of places I’ve been published (as well as the places I’ve submitted to and not been published), I’ve learned about them through my writing community. You have a piece about parenthood/grief/recovery/humor, but not sure what to do with it? A community of writers has you covered … we share where we’ve submitted, where we’ve seen similar style work, and what sites we find interesting.

– A writing community helps with feelings of vulnerability. Sharing your work feels scary. But the more you share your writing, the less scary it gets. And who better to practice with than other writers?

– A writing community helps with the dreaded task of self-promotion. I absolutely love reading the published work of someone I know. I love commenting, liking, and sharing … all these things may seem like no big deal, but they matter to the writer. Similarly, engaging with a writer’s work is important to literary magazines–they need as many readers as possible!

– And, if your goal is to get a book published, agents want writers to have a platform. They want to know how the book will be promoted and who will be buying it. One way to build a platform? Have a writing community.

– Finally, we cheer each other on. We commiserate when the work feels challenging. We have peers who understand when we say we’re not making the progress we’ve hoped. It’s a unique subsection of people who live for hours at a time in their own heads, who are both exhilarated and stymied by getting words on the page, who share the sting of rejections, and the thrill of success. Being able to talk about these things makes this whole gig feel worthwhile.  

On the third day away at camp, my essay, “Through the Looking Glass,” was published. I didn’t have the same nervousness about sharing my writing that I’d felt a few years earlier. And I knew that as soon as I got home–after a hot shower–who I wanted to share this success with … my community of writers.