If You Build It, They Will Come

WriteCamp has come and gone for this year, but it will surely be back and improved from the first iteration. "What is WriteCamp?" you ask. WriteCamp is a free, open-source style conference with the intent of bringing together anyone within the writing community to discuss writing, network with other literary folk, and exchange their knowledge. It was a great opportunity for those involved and those who planned, and I believe that it is something sorely needed in the literary community as a whole.

I have worked hard over the past three years to build a community of writers here in Milwaukee. I think that WriteCamp was a great culmination of that work, and I think it can only improve from here. Community is essential in my mind to fostering writers. While many writers feel comfortable in isolation, I believe that all of us still seek for strong voices and empathetic ears to truly make our writing come to its fruition. Community is about three things: support, resources, and interaction.

Support:
Community should support its members, helping to reach their goals. The intent of the Milwaukee Writers Workshop is to help its authors reach publication, whether its six months or six years down the road. A community should also bring its members to task if they begin to falter because we all want to succeed and sometimes we just need a little bit of a kick in the pants to get us off our butts and take a risk. But even when we fall (and believe me, rejections are aplenty), the community is there to pick us back up.

Resources:
Community is also about pooling resources. All of us have had our collection of experiences, and we all have our various backgrounds. Together, all of that helps to build a network of good information that can be shared in order to build upon the first tenet - support.

Interaction:
Community is about being with other writers. Sometimes we need to rant, sometimes we need to boast, and sometimes we just want to bathe in the warmth of creative energy. Whatever the case may be, having a group of like-minded individuals helps us build our network and have people who support us.

If you're interested in building a community where you are, I am always happy to share my experiences of organizing The Milwaukee Writers Workshop. Anyone in Milwaukee is also always welcome to join us at any of our meetings.