Writing In Community
Writing marathons and forging bonds through writing
I have long believed in the power of a writing community. The seeds were planted in the 1980s during high school and undergrad when some of my writing instruction included feedback by my peers, but also in 1994 when I moved to Kentucky and joined my first writing group. It was this writing group experience that shaped me as both a writer and later as a writing teacher. However, it was my 2008 induction into the National Writing Project through my very first Summer Institute (and 17 years of summer institutes that followed as site director) that taught me the power of writing in community.
Fast forward to 2020 and the 200+/- National Writing Project sites were prevented by the pandemic from holding summer institutes, camps, and other programming so central to their goal. Out of that chaos Write Across America was born. Writing marathons have always been an important part of National Writing Project work (my local site usually incorporates them into professional development and youth writing programs alike). A band of intrepid NWP site leaders determined to offer a synchronous writing marathon that traveled the country and for five years we visited almost every state (including Alaska and Hawaii) by hops and jumps. That first summer we started in Wisconsin and wrapped in Louisiana (with the father of the writing marathon). This slide deck is not fully updated but gives you many more stops. That pandemic writing experience led to my current writing community: the Rebel Cartographers.
While I love this community (see Writing Kin) and the Lexington Poetry Month community, one of the things that broke my heart the most was no longer writing with my students and creating the joyful community of writers that is the heart of my classroom practice (see The Last Class). I love writing in community but I really love writing in community with young people. Fortunately, retirement does not impact my membership in the National Writing Project or my local site so we are reinventing some youth writing programs that will be good for young writers, for my local site, and for me. I do love a triple play!
We are reviving our Teen Writers Day Out program which was a writing marathon we hosted on campus, but this spring we are relocating to host schools on opposite ends of our service region to make things easier for busing and other logistics (a challenge even before the pandemic). We are offering a youth writing camp during Spring Break at two schools (although one of those locations could possibly attract students from multiple school districts). Plus, I am working with pre-service teachers to plan and offer these events so that is a lot of interaction with young writers which might in turn lead to summer programming but that is a question for another day.
Last, but not least, inspired by my work with the National Writing Project and then my decade-long journey with LexPoMo, I have been on a journey as a poet. Many years of that journey I would not have even called myself a poet. For years I have been aware of the Lexington Poetry Gauntlet as an opportunity to learn and grow in a community, but I have also known that writing 100 poems in a year was not something I could attempt while working full time. But now that I am practicing retirement and will be retired I took the plunge and 2026 will be my year to embark on this adventure. Wish me luck! It is writing in community but also a challenge that will push me to learn and grow in many ways (I hope).
Have you ever written in community? What writing communities are important to you? Should I pick up the Write Across America baton again (this summer) so we can visit all 50 states? What do you think about my retirement community pillars? Reading in Community, Watching in Community, and Writing in Community? Subscribe to my substack to share your own practice retirement/retirement practices.