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Being With Writers
by Betsy Warland
Every now and then I am struck by the way we human beings tell stories non-stop. Just observe people going about their daily lives: we are constantly talking, which is always some form of story-telling. In an urban setting there can be countless stories – whether anecdotal, incidental, or oratorical – all being told simultaneously within any circumference you can observe. In addition, when seemingly quiet, we are telling stories in our mind: reliving an incident or planning our day. Or, we are reading a story in print; listening to various forms of stories on the radio, television, in a film, or other performing art forms. It’s nothing short of obsessive!
As writers, this endless plethora is the source of much of our “material.” And, as writers, we have a notably different relationship to this story-telling. This “different relationship” is frankly too nuanced, disparate and complex to describe here but suffice it to say that it exists: writers experience the world, as Dickenson wrote, “at a slant.” In some intractable manner, there is a part of us that is always observing how the story is being told, even if it is we, ourselves, telling it. We are always sleuthing for the left out.
The irony in all this is that writing is a deeply solitary act yet we need the company of other writers for this companionship normalizes us! To be sure, the exchange of ideas and professional information is crucial, but there is something else that is even more important. Together, we create an uncontested context that supports our pursuit of any given narrative’s quirky slant of perception.
It is hard, however, to find this companionship for we are essentially incognito. There is no physical quality nor accouterment that identifies writers. No signal, nor consistent locus. Immediate recognition is rarely an option. Even when we “know” we are entering a group of writers, we can appear incognito. During an orientation for a writing intensive, I recall noting that teachers and students alike looked like people one would see in the super market. For a few moments, I wondered if I was in the wrong place.
When we become identifiable to one another, the magic begins as the incremental manifestations of precisely what set of idiosyncratic story-telling elements each writer is driven by becomes apparent. Through this, we grow to know one another deeply. This deeply is not based on the normal exchange of autobiographical details that define identity, nor on the sharing of lifestyle similarities that typically bond people, (writers are about as disparate a type of people as you can find.) Rather, it is based on our endless fascination with one another’s preoccupations about narrative and the very act of writing itself. Details about one another’s personal and public lives can remain sketchy for months; even years.
Last year, upon arriving at a TWS retreat, we began to make dinner and suddenly found ourselves up to our necks in a water fight (metaphorically speaking) about the virtues and attributes of our favourite forms of punctuations verses those forms we loathed. In a momentary lull in this passionate discussion, I commented: “There really is something different about being with other writers!”
Author Bio
Betsy Warland is the Director of The Writer’s Studio. She has authored 10 books of non-fiction and poetry. Her most recent book of poetry being Only This Blue. She has been teaching creative writing across Canada for 25 years, and has been a manuscript consultant for over a decade.
