Thursday! 3-13: I'm Thinking of Starting a Place. Should I?

V2, I13

I’m getting a crazy idea about community. That is, I’m giving serious thought to starting an online community for creative folks.

Yes, I know. I’ve tried this before. It didn’t work well. The folks in the community were — and are! — good people doing good work, but I didn’t have an aim for what I wanted. As such, things got quiet and I eventually killed it off — not that anyone really missed it. I’ve also been part of a pretty good community or two but they, like so many things I encounter in the world, never feel like they fit me the way I want them too. That is, of course, a necessary part of living in a world with other people who do their own things and live their own lives. Few things will suit us the way we want. Everything chafes us eventually, rubs a place that’s gotten tender after prolonged contact with the harshness of reality, and we withdraw. I’ve withdrawn a lot over the past couple of years.

Withdrawing has its time and place, but I don’t think we ought to stay withdrawn, not as humans nor as creative people. Art doesn’t occur in isolation, even though it can be made very well in isolated places. Artists need the hustle and bustle of humanity around them, birdsong and car horn, the squeal of brakes and the whisper of falling leaves. We are translators of the unspoken, we crazy creative humans and before we can share how we see the world, we need to run up against it. We need to build up static so we can discharge it into stories we write, the pictures we draw, the quilts we sew, the songs we play. That is how we breathe life back into the stagnation of every-day routine.

I think, and I am by no means sure of this, that we artists need to spend time with other artists to be better at our work. We are better when we share our experiences — the tricks we learn, the miseries we overcome, the debris that trips us up. We need people who get the itch that bugs us when we don’t create something for a while. We sometimes need people who are fighting a similar fight to ours to push us along. We also need cheerleaders and hype-men, friends to carry our work to places we do’t know and haven’t seen, enthusiasts who know how hard it is to write even a “simple” haiku.

In short, we need a creative community. Now, some of you already have one. I am very happy you do. I’m not kidding you even a little bit! Holy crap-weasel, how cool is that? If you don’t, though, I’m wondering if perhaps I might get a place started that might suit you. Let me tell you a little bit of what I’d like to build.

It’s an online community, probably on a platform like Discord. I know Discord reasonably well — at least well enough for the basics — and it won’t cost anything. Later on we might want a few bucks in the game but that’s later on. We’re nowhere near that now. The community won’t be Leaders + Followers or Jimmie Talks to Everyone Else. I’ll have the keys to the kingdom, so to speak, but only to handle administrative stuff and to deal with any rare issue that might arise¹. I won't be the only one with those keys, either. There will be others. What I want, though, it for everyone to feel free to bring up things you want to talk about, to help others however you can, to ask the questions that occur to you, and even² to introduce us to the art you’re making. There is no head of the table beyond what the platform and good organization requires.

The community will be active. A hangout. We’ll have some regular stuff, like maybe a live chat or mastermind-like groups. We’ll have days when it’s all about one particular theme, like what we’re all working on — showing off the stuff we have to sell or whatever needs publicity³. We won’t be specific to one form of art either. I want visual artists to have a place here just like writers or poets. This won’t even necessarily be a place for only professionals (or those seeking to become professional). If you have a craft you take seriously, whether you make money with it or not, our place could be your place. I don’t want dead air most days. I want folks talking to each other regularly, even if it’s not a raging chat fest. Maybe that’s a bit of a dream, especially since my own reach isn’t all that far, but I’m not thinking about where I am now but where we could be in a month or three.

It’s possible I won’t get the community I envision. It’s possible few, if any, of you are interested in coming to a new place. We are busy people with a ton of stuff in front of us every week. The last thing we need is a new thing about which we’ll feel guilty because we don’t spend as much time on it as we “should”. I respect your busy life.

Still, it seems possible, doesn't it? Other people build communities seemingly overnight. They snap their fingers and hundreds of people show up — with hands full of money for them, too! — and fill the places they start with lively, useful, supportive communication. To be perfectly honest, that’s always seemed like magic to me. I’m not a great people person. I’m not a leader. I’m just some guy writing little stories and poems and trying to be as much help as I can to other folks who want to live their best cool, creative lives.

Here’s where I’d like your help. Would you like in on a community I create? Is there something you’d want from it that I didn’t mention? Is this a bugnuts-crazy idea that I should drop like a flaming bag of goose poo? Let me know. Seriously. The comments here are wide open and so is my e-mail.

We need community. Maybe we have enough already. Maybe we need just one more. Tell me, please!

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Remember the story I told you I submitted a couple of weeks ago? Well, they liked it enough to accept it! It’s called “The Paper Swans of Ellendell” and it will appear in the anthology Postcards from Mars, published by Raconteur Press. You’ll be able to grab the book in physical and e-book form later this year. I’ll let you know when I learn the publication date. I am excited! You’ll like my story. It is one of the best things I’ve ever written, and that’s not just a humble-brag.

This is the picture that inspired my story.

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What I Wrote this Week

Jimmie @JimmieWrites

If you wish to be mellifluous Here is what you must surely do: Summon all of your influence To make every bit of your mellis fluu.

Jimmie @JimmieWrites

The thing about personae is They often get dramatis As if they were a queenly plant Snow, Marble, or Clamatis.

Look, not all of Odgen Nash’s poems were gems, right? They were all clever, though, and so are mine. Ha!

1. You know how that goes.

2. In the appropriate places, of course, because we are not Spammy People.

3. Though we won’t crowd the week. Not every day needs to be this way.