Writers in the community or a writers' community?

Gibraltar is a close knit community. Whether we like it or not, our compact geography means we cannot escape the fact that we live closely together, work closely together and enjoy leisure time when we are barely able to avoid bumping into each other. This has huge benefits and some important drawbacks. 

For writers, the benefits should be the ability to reach out and work with other writers in an open, easy manner. The drawbacks are that we often need to be alone to concentrate and write and that we need to stand back from the world a little, observe it at a distance and then disappear into worlds that we create. Another disadvantage is that if we happen to write non-fiction, it is incredibly difficult to make any objective commentary without offending someone. And in a place that is so small with an element of crowd mentality that is sometimes disappointingly small alongside it, that can be disastrous for anyone trying to publish work.

So we seem to have an impasse - a community inhabited by numerous writers and yet no real writers' community to speak of. We have many writers in our community. Some are published locally and well-known: Hernandez, Durante, Caruana, Chiappe and Benady to name a few. Others are published abroad and known to some extent here: Sanchez, Cruz, Green (I think of her as Gibraltarian since she grew up here), Dignam, Moreno, to name a few of those. Sadly, Gibraltar has so much writing talent but such limited outlets and barely any support systems in place that while there are many writers in our community, we cannot lay claim to having a writers' community. I find that a sad reflection of how reading and writing - despite literary festival and a handful of book-related events such as World Book Day - are pushed into the margins of our cultural life.

The Writer Apart..............Image by Grae Dickason from Pixabay 

So what is it that I mean by a writers' community? I had to give that some thought - when I set out writing this post, I was not entirely clear what I meant. I had set out to vent some frustrations that there seems to be no proper platform for writers in Gibraltar. Not really. We have a couple of competitions which serve to put off more writers than these attract, a couple of attempts at writing groups which have never really built up to fruition, occasional poetry readings and workshops, but nothing concrete that an aspiring writer, of whatever age, can reach out to for support and encouragement and guidance. There is only one publisher, generally quite caught up with work, a government loan system to help to self-publish work and no form of filtering or editing. Worse than all that put together - no book shops to sell work in a focused way. There's a bit of this and a bit of that, but something essential is missing.

Writers, by nature of their calling, tend to be pretty solitary folk. And because we have to spend rather a lot of time in our own worlds, we can become introspective and full of self-doubt. Just as dangerous, we can also develop over-inflated ideas of how good our writing is only to have our egos smashed to smithereens when we don't win a competition or have our work rejected and described as mediocre. I expect most writers fall somewhere on a spectrum of mediocre that stretches from 'not too bad' along 'reasonable' to 'quite good, an enjoyable read'. There are very few in the world who are outstanding as writers. When writers are isolated from each other, they find it hard to develop their skills, or their confidence, or curb their over-confidence. Publication is a goal that can barely be aspired to in Gibraltar except through Amazon or if you have a good deal of cash available, and we are so out of touch with the international world of publication that the goal appears completely unrealistic.

A writer's community is a place, metaphorically speaking at least, where writers meet other writers and realise that there are other people out there that actually get it. Other writers get the sense of frustration, isolation, doubt, disconnection from the world of reality, the difficulties of research and the grappling day to day with the English language, or Spanish or Arabic or whatever language we are writing in (Llanito included - we really ought to write in our own language as much as we can). Some writers can successfully be part of an online writing community. Others prefer the face to face link. Either way, coming together physically or virtually can help a writer thrive and the creation of a literary environment can help a community's literature thrive. That is what I feel is missing in Gibraltar.

Image by StartupStockPhotos from Pixabay 

I am not going to lay down blame or recriminations. I, alongside some other writers,  have tried to set up groups and workshops. And I have found it hard to sustain momentum or gain support. If writers in the community feel the need to be part of a writers' community in order to thrive and develop their writing, then they also need to put some time and effort into helping to create that community, that literary environment. There are writers' groups all over the world, and it is rare that any two groups are the same. Not everyone enjoys the experience, but where there are a number of different groups that help different groups of writers in different ways (a bit like there are so many different dance groups in Gib and every dancer will gravitate towards the one that they feel most comfortable with and benefit the most from) then literature of different types and styles will really begin to thrive.

A writers' community is a sounding board, it provides mutual support and encouragement,  it shares learning and helps develop skills, it can create collaborations and projects, it can help overcome fear and doubt, provide constructive criticism, prompt ideas, motivate and help each other through inevitable moments of doubt. They can embolden creativity, challenge the status quo and encourage subversive commentary on our society - what is creativity if not a subversion of what already exists? 

Writers' communities or groups don't have to be formal. They don't have to be formal associations with elected officers, or 'cultural entities' (a horrible expression that associates to paranormal activities in cheap blood and gore movies and is probably largely to blame - purely by its unpleasant aesthetic because writers are so sensitive to words and their connotations - for the lack of organised writers' groups in Gibraltar). Communities can be organic, amorphous, informal but with sufficient regularity of structure and shared values and goals so as to function well. They can be large or small, they can be temporary subsets of larger groupings working on a specific project. They can meet in a house, a bar, a park, in the middle of a street or under a bus shelter. At its most basic, writing only needs ideas, paper and pencil. And shelter - no-one enjoys writing anything in the rain!

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay 

I'm not sure why this doesn't happen in Gibraltar. There seems to be a degree of willingness to meet up until you organise a meet up and then no-one turns up. The Independent Writers' and Artists' Project may well blossom into something positive for writers and other artists and there are other groupings that seem to be emerging. It would, of course, help if our culture support systems took literature seriously. We have a new Minister now and a cultural services agency that has recently announced - finally - that culture is more than events. Perhaps an overdue change will happen. Sometimes writers, as part of the artistic community, just need the right foundation, the right support from government to develop.

Of all the artistic disciplines, it is in writing that the memories of our community are held. The stories of our diverse community are gathered through writing. Our common memories are turned into personal observations, into stories and tales that resound with local colour and characters that should always be preserved. It is through the writing of stories that films are made, that blogs are produced, that social media posts are created, all of which also hold our community's stories. Gibraltar, as I have said over and over, needs to tell its stories in the voices of its writers - even (and cultural services agencies please note) where those voices are not coming from the throat of 'born' llanitos, even if those voices have only 'just got off the plane'. Observations and stories told through the voices of those outside are just as valid as those from the inside. I think we need a writers' community. Do you?

Image by phillipbanks from Pixabay