Net Work

Who are you tied to? Who do you want to share pie with?

I am back from my summer travels in the magical final days before classes resume and my life picks up speed. The tomato plants on the patio are taller than me. The zinnias are a tangle of color, drawing bees and hummingbirds to the space outside the kitchen window. In this season of abundance, I am grateful for the community I connected with this summer and how friendships formed in the early years of my creative life have nurtured me. How fortunate to find people who, despite big gaps in time and place, have shown up to inspire and support me again and again.

My creative support since age 5! At the Honey Run Bridge, rebuilt with community support after the 2018 Camp Fire.

I often talk with my students about the importance of making relationships with their peers and developing a supportive writing community. This wasn’t talked about that much when I was student. I don’t know if it was because it was implied by the "things writers should do,” or if it was hidden under the dominant myth of the writer who lived off the grid and wrote books hailed as revolutionary without the imput for a community at all. But these writers still had editors, or wives who functioned as them, behind the scenes, editing, brainstorming, and often publishing their own, lesser known, books. (Iris Jamahl Dunkle’s substack is dedicated to this kind of uncovering, check it out.)

It’s not just that the story of the wives has been lost, it’s the truth behind good partnerships. Partnerships are community. There is always a community. No one does this alone. I married my first reader too. This is true for many people I know, though certainly not all. You don’t need a creative partner who is also your life partner. But you do need creative partners in your life. You do need support. And when the world is fragile and raw and bleak, you need it more than ever.

Reconnecting with my college roommate and arts advocate in Eureka, CA

A lot of writers I meet are deeply uncomfortable about the idea of a network. It’s not just that many of us are introverts (though that is real). It’s that there’s often a belief that there are right people to know and wrong people to know, and that finding the right people is impossible for most of us. This belief is connected to making our work “pay,” and that one must court certain kinds of friends who can help open doors to big book deals (or whatever). There is nothing wrong with wanting to make connections, or wanting to get paid, or dreaming of big book deals. But when it comes to a network, what I have found is the only gains come from genuine connections, and the value of those connections is worth far more to the soul than the pocketbook.

Good connections are sometimes complicated. They don’t always last forever, or nurture you for life. But that’s true for many things. Life is complicated, and at any moment, any one of us is juggling a million different things, sometimes tending to our community can’t be a priority. But most of the time real connections don’t go dead if you haven’t plugged into them constantly, people who care about you are happy to pick up the line and continue where you left off.

The word network feels impersonal. It feels computerized. And in the age of AI that is probably the last thing most writers want to be associated with. Building a network is human work. Let’s do it like people.

I like the image of an old rope net. One made by hands and untangled by hands and worked in the salt air as the sun rises and sets. The knots that tie us together as friends and as people are the bonds that hold us to our creativity.

Build your net with the people you care about. The people you like talking with and the people you would be excited to have over for dinner.

When I was young I worked events in bookstores. I learned that some of the writers that I loved turned out to be people I would ever want to split a piece of pie with. That is fine. I can like their books and not want to share pie.

The Booklegger, Eureka, CA My first bookseller job was here. I didn’t work events!

But I like pie. I like people who share pie with me. And that is the kind of network you want to build. One that fills you up, challenges you in the right ways, and offers nourishment when you need it.

Time is valuable. Tie knots with people you like. Reach back to your old tangles and check in. Ask your friends how you can support their creativity today because you care about them. Build your life this way, and you will find care and creation in abundance.

At the Morris Graves Museum in Eureka, CA

And in a world where creative human tasks are being exported to machines, well, I’d argue there is nothing more radical you can do than to turn to your own hands and work to build your community net. Don’t wait for others to reach out to you. Take a deep breath and begin. Maybe it’s a call to the local writing organization you’ve been meaning to join. Maybe it’s chatting with the person sitting next to you at the reading you attend. Maybe it’s reaching back out to someone from your past who lifted you up, filled your creative well when you needed it most, and telling them what it meant to you. There are many ways to build your net. Do it with creation and care.

Leave a note: What are you excited about creating lately?

The dahlia garden in Eureka, CA.

And also, what would you like to see more of in this newsletter?

Did you catch a typo? This month I’m going to give away a copy of Sari Fordham’s memoir Wait For God To Notice to a lucky winner. Sari a writing pal who has been in my network since my graduate school days. Her book about growing up in Uganda as the child of missionaries considers family, hope, faith, and the complexity of the world with nuance and grace. I had the honor of translating some of the letters in this book from Finnish to English (a long time ago! I couldn’t do that today). You can subscribe to her practical, entertaining environmental newsletter for busy people here.

I was reading Wait for God to Notice on my trip this summer. I have wanted to read it for years—even before it was written but somehow it has taken me so long to get to it. I’m thankful to have Sari as a long-lasting knot in my net!

If you don’t see a typo, drop a note hello in the comments and if there somehow isn’t a typo, or if no one catches one you will be entered into a drawing to win.

Fine print: you must be a subscriber to win, and you must share your address with me so that I can get bookshop to send you a copy of Sari’s book. You have until the next newsletter comes out to find a typo, though the first person who finds one wins. Thanks for playing!