A writer's community

When I was studying for my PhD in Public Administration at USC in the early 1980s, I was part of a scholarly movement that defined itself as being in opposition to the prevailing market-oriented approach to government. Instead of running a government organization -- a library, say -- like a business, we proposed a more community-oriented approach. The particular strategy I was advocating was called coproduction, in which the organization would involve its users as coproducers of the service they were receiving. It was a bottom-up strategy in which the professionals and their clients were seen as having equal power in determining the kind of services that would be provided.

There was much discussion then of different kinds of communities. I remember in particular talk about sodalities, communities of interest. I understand that this term is most commonly associated with the Catholic Church, but we extended it to include fellowships of all kinds in which participants joined together informally because of mutual interests. I can't remember now who it was -- Barbara Bader? Jacalyn Eddy? -- who talked about the sodality created by Anne Carroll Moore and other like-minded women in the early part of the nineteenth century. They were bound together by their mutual passion for children and books and for the new institutions that were forming to bring the two together.

This has been a week in which my own sodality, a small community of writing women who care about each other as well as about children, books, and/or libraries, has been an enormous boost to my own productivity. It was a week in which my writing languished as I dealt with errands and tasks, both mundane (going to the post office) and glorious (acquiring my new digital piano and finding the right headphones after three trips to Radio Shack).

Do you know how hard it is to get back to the manuscript when you've been away for a week? You can't remember where you were or what you were thinking when you abandoned it. The learning curve seems impossibly steep. I was stuck, and even lunch with my writing friends Susan and Theresa just seemed like a pleasant distraction, not the usual stimulus to be the best kind of writer I can be. I was well and firmly stuck.

Then Theresa shared a midnight inspiration with Susan and me. She called it "meanderings" but it was a brilliant essay on yearnings and desire and what these powerful emotions have to do with the art of writing. My heart answered, "yes, exactly." As if she also knew just what I needed, my friend Elaine sent a long message (see the third comment under the previous post about historical gaps.) She triggered my thinking again about both the content of the chapter I was working on and about the whole process of writing. I spent much of yesterday back at the computer, doing some good revision and moving the Book along.

It sometimes feels so solitary. But there are friends out there, members of the sodality who are there when we need them. Thank you.