A few years ago, when I started looking for like-minded writers (to share a common love for, and commiserate about, writing), I had hoped to replicate the success I had finding other stay-at-home dads like me to join a community to talk about parenting.
Silly me. Thinking they — writers and stay home dads — are the same animals I can just round up like cattle and place all together in my “ranch” of a community. As though how one community is formed is how others are too.
The truth is I was completely, utterly, ridiculously and hopelessly wrong!
The Truth About Cats And Dogs
The thing about the writing fraternity is that it’s a very different animal. People in this community are like some deep dark secret. Or a poker hand you refuse to reveal until you’re sure you’re ready.
Or maybe those aren’t the right analogies.
Maybe we’re just cats and dogs!
With dogs, it’s all about wilful exuberance and dizzy loyalties. Jumping up and down in giddy enthusiasm as the food dish arrives or when your owner returns from work.
With cats, it’s the opposite. Caution. Aloofness. Distance. Unflappability. Inertia.
When I started a writing club two years ago, I was the dog. Enthusiastic to a fault.
I would arrange meetings regularly. Consistently prepare stuff to share weekly (often daily) including books, articles, links to writing resources and training materials I amassed over the years. In short, I would overshare on great writings (enthu dog remember?).
Most of all, I would motivate everybody in the club to commit to their individual writing journeys faithfully. Because I have seen evidence of, and I believed fervently in, their writing prowess. They just need to write more, write often, write consistently.
And then unleash their magnum opus to a world aching for original, human, non-AI voices!
In supporting that mantra, I was the top cheerleader dog! Unfortunately, everyone else was probably more cat! It often took forever to garner a response. Meetings rarely exceeded 50% attendance. Exchange of writing pieces were few and far between. Most times were spent encouraging and motivating those too “busy with life” to sit down and put pen to paper or fingers to keyboards.
For members in my club, writing looked to me like it’s the last priority on their list. Assuming it was even on a list to begin with!
Hard Truth: Writing Is Not A Priority For Many Who Can Write
Over the years, I couldn’t help but notice that majority of the members in my writing club were at best ambivalent, and at worst non-committal about how they are doing in the writing space. Sure, one or two of them connected regularly and shared their writing projects with me. Two of them even underwent a memoir writing programme with me.
One even took my advice and ended up getting not one but two essays published last year in the national daily. And got paid!
Yet the hard truth for me is that over time, I found it harder and harder to be the lone dog in the kennel as the others assumed more and more the persona of cats!
After a while, it got really exhausting for me to keep “rah-rah-ing the troops”. They didn’t know it at the time and, to be fair, neither did I. I was slowly but surely having the dog in me completely muzzled and neutered!
It gradually got to a point where I had to ask myself “what’s the point (no pun intended) of holding on to such a club if I’m ‘driving everything’?”
Why keep throwing myself at something (writing ambivalence) that’s as unmovable as the Rock of Gibraltar?! If members don’t prioritise writing in their lives, isn’t that their right? Who am I to judge? After all, I too have often had my writing pursuits derailed by something called “Life”! So cut others the same slack I would appreciate getting too, especially when the writing takes a back seat to family matters, paid employment, or any number of things life throws at us.
As counter-intuitive as it sounds, learn to accept that writing is simply not a priority for many writers.
Yet, If Writers Don’t Write, Wherefore The Writing Cometh?
Yet, the hard truth is that if writers don’t prioritise writing in their lives, where will we get our great literary works?
The question that bugs me no end is this: Is it really too much to ask that writers write regularly, be it daily or weekly or fortnightly?
I’m discovering that it is. Too much.
It explains why many speak of writing only upon retiring from their careers and worldly commitments. Writing is relegated to a hobby, like flower arrangement, fishing or Sudoku.
An afterthought.
While certainly writing can be a hobby and not executed with what might amount to excessive religious fervour. And for sure when done in a relaxed manner with no pressure to perform, writing can yield some often unexpected and wonderful works of greatness. Think of how writers like Douglas Adams, Toni Morrison, or J K Rowling got started.
But eventually, writers must decide. Writing must not be a mere hobby. Time, effort, discipline and commitment must surely prevail at any cost to birth forth great works for the world to savour no?
Or am I, once again, asking for too much?
