What is a Community of Voices?
"Do you think I'm any good?"
an aspiring writer once asked Bill Downey.
"Don't worry," Bill said,
"there's plenty of room in the middle."
The fellow stared at his
own toes for a moment. "So you think my writing is mediocre?"
Bill
laughed, and a bit of mischief flickered across his expression. "I
think you are a damn good writer, but there is very little room at
the top. Still, there's lots of space in the middle. In fact that's
where all the work is. Once you figure that out, you're practically
there."
There is a popular notion
that only the most brilliant writing can be published. Of course opinions
vary on what actually constitutes brilliance, and so there are mountains
of good stories that will never be published for a whole lot of arbitrary
reasons, all falling under the general heading: Does not meet our needs
at this time.
So as writers, we study the
market carefully, and still it feels as though we send our work out
blindly, hoping luck will light the way. We hold the dream that not
only will our stories be published, but our readers will think we're
the most talented writers ever to walk the earth.
In any writing community there
are a few stars and a lot of people who have stories to tell and are
willing to work hard to do so. Community of Voices is about all of
them—about working from that wide open space in the middle. It's
a celebration of the creative process that is blind to age, experience
and previous success. Community of Voices says, let's just put it out
there and see if it flies.
Grace
Rachow
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