It Takes A Village...

....to write a story.

Now I remember why I went to get the MFA: Community.

Five months out now, and I don't have anyone to share my work with, and so the advance of revision gets stalled at the point where I have no more ideas on how to further the story or polish an ending.

As difficult, painful and annoying as workshop could be, I can't express how much I miss that built-in community of readers who were as eager (or as inescapably obligated) to read your stuff as you were to read theirs. That community was where I did most of my growth as a writer, and I am feeling rather at a loss without them right now.

Of course, I will just have to create a new community, but as with any such architectural endeavor, it will take time, and sweat, and a lot of cajoling to keep it together, at least until it becomes well established on a permanent foundation. But I can't do this alone, and as wonderful as my non-writer readers are, they are not trained in the narrative arts at the level that my fellow writers at Arizona are. Or perhaps they are as astute to narrative, but do not have a grasp of the vocabulary, of the means of expression to communicate what is missing, why something does not satisfy.

So I will get there, but in the meantime, I just feel set adrift, my former community scattered to the winds, and I all alone on the quest to make meaning.

(Okay, pardon the pity party I'm throwing here. But I really do feel alone. I know I'm not, which is heartening, but where will I find all of you? And how long will it take?)