Lack of workshopping environment

First, to my friends. Thank you so much for reading this. Your support, just by glancing through these blogs, means so much.

Today, I met up with Kim and Rosemary for our annual summer EnP run. We started it a couple years ago when I stayed with Kim and her mom during Chatham's summer residency. Because we were all located in the same general vicinity and hadn't seen each other since graduating from SRU, we thought it would be nice to get together again. We sat on the patio of the EnP in the Waterfront, watched the river and talked about writing and our lives since graduating. It was nice enough that we did it again, and then again. This year makes our third year and an official tradition.

We brought up a topic that I also posted about on Facebook. The lack of workshopping or a writing environment. People will argue that anywhere is a writing environment, anywhere we happen to write. But that's not necessarily true.

There is something about being around writers that makes a person want to write. Writing begets writing, I suppose. When we step into a classroom or into a summer workshop, and are greeted by friends who are on the same skill level and who inspire us to write, to make ourselves better. We have teachers who communicate through emails and who are willing to read our work line by line. And it isn't just "Here are your grammatical errors," or "You have a plot gap here." They mold our craft and make us better. Graduate school destroyed me as a writer. It ground me down and then built me back again into something better. It was hard work, emotional turmoil, and yet I stood taller at the end.

And then, a month or so after graduating, we sit at our computers, begin to write, and realize that we have no  mentor anymore. No students with which to work. Our friends have lives, their own stories, and it doesn't feel right to bombard them with requests for edits or comments. What are we to do?

• Message them anyway and hope for the best.
• Join a city workshopping group and hope for the same level of quality, professionalism, and drive, and that they won't steal our work.
• Message professors to see if they can take time out of their insanely busy schedules to continue to help.
• Take the training wheels off, trust our instincts, and work by ourselves.

John Green once said something along the lines of writing being for introverted people who have a story to tell. I've come to find that writing is a very solitary, very lonely practice. Especially when our environment changes. We work through our stories--if we can find the time, energy, and inspiration to write--edit them ourselves, and send them out to lit mags with the hope that they're good enough.

More often than not, they aren't. But sometimes we get that stray acceptance letter that almost seems like a fluke. It bolsters our self-confidence, pushes us to write again and send out more, and makes us feel wanted and appreciated.

That is why my friends, and anyone else who reads this, mean so much to me. They read my words and come back for more. And after a while, I don't know if I'm writing for myself or for them. And yet, I still haven't figured out whether I'll message them and ask for workshopping opportunities, or respect our differing lives and hope for the best.