Joining a new community can be a daunting task. From our personal experiences, it can also be fraught with differing viewpoints, personalities, and cultures, some of which are inconspicuous and discovered on the fly.
When we first joined the writing community by attending the Writer’s Digest Annual Conference in New York City, our initial foray into the authoring and publishing worlds, we didn’t quite know what to expect. As it turned out, we couldn’t have received a warmer welcome…
Having each spent over a decade in academic settings, we both had experience with challenging interactions and situations, especially at conferences, where the atmosphere, more often than not, had a competitive and, at times, adversarial feel. This pertained not only to the personalities involved, but to epistemologies, methodologies, allegiances, and everything in between.
By way of contrast, from the moment we set foot inside the writers’ conference, we experienced an energetic, inviting, and refreshing energy. We discovered a culture founded largely on collaboration and respect. Individual opinions and styles were embraced, and almost everyone we met, fellow authors included, were more than happy to share information, knowledge, and resources, even with people supposedly competing for the same agent’s attention. We found an unequivocal reverence for the creative process, something that struck a chord within each of us.
We are certainly not suggesting the writing world is devoid of competition, egos, and its fair share of internal and external politics. We are also not saying the scholarly world has little to offer apart from what we mentioned above. Some of our closest friends stem from interactions borne in academic venues, and we have long cherished freedom of speech, as well as a forum in which to discover, learn, share, and teach.
We are delighted to say our first experience in the writing world offered a life-generating breath of fresh air. For that, we remain grateful. At the same time, in the spirit of collaboration and through our own creative works and endeavours, we look forward to giving back to our new community.
Who knows, we might even succeed at drawing some new people in.