Books Are Stronger When Written in Community

We write alone, but stories are meant to be shared.

In January of 2020, I began to teach a yearlong class designed to lead ten students through writing the first draft of a novel. We started out the year by writing commitments to ourselves—promising to make time and put in the work. We got specific about the books we had in mind: how they might move through us, change us. We named what we might offer these stories.

There is a power to dreaming ahead, tasting ambition, and word-count commitments. On our first day we talked about how long we wanted our books to be (some students saw themselves writing short novels, others more standard-length books). Then we began to get technical, estimating a word count and dividing that number over nine months. We made further divisions, calculating our word counts by the week and, lastly, by the availability we had in our workdays.

I say our because I was working on a book too.

I had sold my memoir in the winter of 2019 and had made plans for completing a first draft just a few months ahead of my students. I shared this information as we looked at our calendars.

With our weekly goals in mind, we looked for space and time. When not enough time was available, we talked about what we might give up. Leisure time, in most cases, perhaps outings with friends.

We knew nothing of how 2020 would turn out, couldn’t guess we’d be inside mostly, or that we would regularly be overextended with dread. The year 2020 was not a particularly straightforward time to devote oneself to writing, most of all a novel. To imagine a world that doesn’t exist requires not only a sustained attention but a sustained effort.

As more information came out about Covid-19 and the world began to look resolutely more closed, we had each other. Our screens glowed each week. Week to week, we became intimate about each of the things we were trying to write. We knew what parts of book writing gave us trouble, what chapters were difficult, and how our lives interrupted our best efforts. We knew when emergencies took center stage.

It was all okay. The point wasn’t succeeding. In 2020, the goal moved away from finishing a book to letting the writing take whatever role it needed for our own benefit during a year of crisis.

The year 2020 was not a particularly straightforward time to devote oneself to writing, most of all a novel.

All of us decided to stay with our original plans, if only to try to answer to that part of ourselves that needed to tell a story, to try to remain living, breathing, vibrant. Trying was what mattered. Trying was the beautiful thing.

As the year went on, our communal trying became a safely guarded space in which we affirmed and believed that the effort of putting the ineffable into language was important work. If we were able to write, it meant we were able to believe that a world where we published work and found readers was still possible. Our lives would be affected by Covid-19 in many ways, and our meeting together to talk about the importance of language was a weekly renewal of that act of faith. Collectively, we complained about deadlines, grieved, and came back to why writing mattered.

In the end, everyone walked away with a great number of pages, either shy of finishing or otherwise having reached the final page.

I believe books are stronger when they are written in community. This has never been clearer to me than through trying to write in 2020. We write alone, but stories are meant to be shared. How much more fitting, then, to write in a virtual roomful of people who know exactly what you’re going through?

It was magical to witness all of my ten students’ stories come into being. I shared everything I know about how books work, then urged them to write at a near-subconscious level, forgetting everything I was teaching them, in order to do the important work of inventing, of marching out to new horizons, taking risks, and answering the call of whatever it is that drives us to commit to the art form.

I believe each of these stunning writers did just that. Each and every novel in our class was written with deep care and attention. I invite you to read some excerpts from this beautiful work below.

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If you’re interested in reading the work generated in Ingrid’s 12-Month Novel Generator, find excerpts from some of the graduate’s work below:

• María Alejandra Barrios, excerpt from A Cilantro Wedding Bouquet

• Claire Lobenfeld, excerpt from Fast Songs for Fast Girls

• Raphael Majma, excerpt from One Star

• Andra Nicolescu, excerpt from Midnight in Exile

• Damilola Oyedele, excerpt from Comfort

• Cameron Price, excerpt from We Are Everything at Once

• Charlene Wang, excerpt from Girl with a Primrose Pin