Together We Make Stronger Art

Posted by David Duhr in WBN News & Events      14 comments

Aug
26

TL;DR version: Basically I just riff about how WriteByNight is turning eight years old and how I draw inspiration from you telling us how we inspire you. You know what, just read the post. It’s not even TL this week, I swear!

One of the things we’re most grateful for is that we chose WriteByNight over some of the other options we threw around: Composite Monster, for one. Shibboleth! Exquisite Corpse; Flyleaf; Wanderjahr. My goodness.

This weekend, WriteByNight turns eight years old.

I looked up eighth anniversaries and discovered that the traditional gifts are bronze and pottery. According to this one website, “Bronze is created by combining two different metals, copper and tin, to make something strong and beautiful.” And then “Pottery symbolizes how your relationship grows and changes into something even more amazing with each year, the way that a lump of clay is shaped by an artist.”

I’ll spare you any lengthy analogies. The gist: Together we make stronger, more beautiful art.

Your turn: Which would have been the worst and/or most ridiculous name for WriteByNight: Shibboleth, Composite Monster, Exquisite Corpse, or Wanderjahr? Let us know in the comments section below.

Cycles

Almost every week someone tells us that these blog posts and our weekly email message (sign up in the right sidebar!) inspire them to write. Such responses inspire me to write. It’s a pleasing cycle.

I feel more qualified to write about writing when I’m… you know… actually writing. Like now, when I’m working on a book. At times in the past I’d write blog posts telling you to write every day, find a routine, keep your eyes on the prize. Meanwhile, I’d go weeks, months, without writing anything myself.

Now that I’m deep into this book, I find that a lot of my posts and email messages are about roadblocks I come across in my process. Like last week, when I asked y’all to help me get my groove back. Or in late July, when I struggled with the concept of sharing family secrets in a memoir.

You guys are always full of good advice, and eager to share it. It keeps me going. Just like our emails and blog posts keep you going.

“… combining … to make something strong and beautiful.”

Your turn: Many of our topics for posts come from questions and comments you send our way. Complete the following sentence and I’ll see if I can do anything about it: “I wish you would write a blog post about ________.”

Community

August is also the month I officially decided to quit my MFA program after only six credits, ten years ago. It’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. But I also wonder if I’d be where I am today if hadn’t taken those six credits. (That’s a blog series that’s been on my mind for years.)

The main reason I’m grateful for that one year? Community. I met many writers in my program. We had shared goals, shared pursuits. We helped each other become better writers. We went to readings and conferences together, and to bookstores to share favorite titles, and to bars to share stories and observations. We became friends.

I’m in a writing group, here in 2017, with four of those fellow MFAers.

I married another. You know her.

Community is what I get here, too. It’s one of my favorite things about running Composite Monster Shibbo WriteByNight. Many of you I’ll never meet, but when your names pop up in my inbox or as comments on this website, I’m always eager to see what you have to say, and to hear about what you’re working on. I correspond more with some of you than I do with most of my closest friends and family members.

I hope you’ve found some sense of community here, too. We may no longer have an actual writing center, a place where writers can hang out with one another in person, but I’d like to think of this space as sort of a virtual writing center.

Thanks for hanging out with us.

WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is copy editor and fiction editor at the Texas Observer and writes about literature for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.

WriteByNight is a writers’ service dedicated to helping you achieve your creative potential and literary goals. We work with writers of all experience levels working in all genres, nationwide and worldwide. If you have a 2016 writing project that you’d like a little help with, take a look at our book coaching, private instruction and writer’s block counseling services. Join our mailing list and get a FREE writer’s diagnostic, “Common problems and SOLUTIONS for the struggling writer.”