Novelist Hirsh Sawhney reads at the inaugural night of the Sleeping Giant Reading Series. (photo by Karen Ponzio for the New Haven Independent)
First, I’m gonna brag on what my writer friends and I just did. Then I’ll share a little bit of writerly advice, which is good for non-writing readers to hear, too.
The brag:
I thought it was just a good idea that, like so many, many others, had been lost to the pandemic. In 2019, my writer friends Alice, Emily, Heather, and I planned a reading series, named for the ridge that lies across the north side of my town—the Sleeping Giant. The concept was this: Monthly, we would invite two writers to read for an audience from their work. Then, instead of treating the reading like a class, we would treat it like a salon. There would be no Q&A, just the enjoyment of hearing someone read, and we would follow up instead with a Writers’ Happy Hour, because writers need a chance to meet one another and support one another. Non-writers would, of course, be welcome to raise a glass with us. The evening’s readers would stick around to mingle. It would be FUN. The then-manager of our neighborhood video store-turned-cultural center agreed. We scheduled our first event for April of 2020.
It was a little while—several months past April, I guess—before we realized we were not going to be scheduling readings for that spring, or summer, or fall, or… well, ever.
Instead, Emily, Heather, and I started meeting on Zoom every Wednesday evening to write together. We’d spend the first 20 minutes or so catching up and talking about what we were going to work on that evening. Then we’d turn off our cameras and mute our mics and work for 45 minutes or an hour. Then we’d reconvene to compare notes at the end on what we’d accomplished. It was a really helpful practice that got us through a long, dry period. It helped us write more and, in some cases, at all. Our fourth friend, Alice, told us she was trying to write less, which made us laugh, because we all understand that writing is something we can’t not do. Alice has published I’m not sure how many books and poems and articles and taught for decades in the MFA program at Bennington College. So, she wished us luck and, of course, continued to write anyway.
The four of us saw each other in person a few times between 2020 and 2023, at outdoor cafes and parties. Emily moved to California. Heather and I continued to meet every Wednesday on Zoom. The reading series was never mentioned.
Until, about six months ago, Alice mentioned it. She said it tentatively, the way you might have asked a boy you liked in junior high school if he wanted to walk home with you, expecting him to say no. But we said… maybe? Then Alice’s friend Sandi asked if she could join our party. We had a foursome again. We got together around Alice’s kitchen table and brainstormed an impressively long list of all the writers we know whom we thought we could ask to read for the payment of a few tips at the door and a free drink. And an audience. Writers need audiences. Most of them do, anyway. We got excited about launching this series after all. We met with the new manager of the video store-turned-cultural center. She was excited, too. We picked dates, we wrote emails, we met around Alice’s kitchen table some more.
This past Thursday evening, we launched the Sleeping Giant Reading Series. Forty people showed up—which, if you’ve ever invited people to come out to hear writers read, you know is an awesome number. They listened with attention, they ordered drinks, they exchanged numbers. I even met one of my Substack readers, Linda, in person for the first time! The evening was a resounding success, and I hope if you live in the greater New Haven area, you’ll come out and join us some third Thursday from 7 to 9 p.m. at Best Video Film and Cultural Center.
If you don’t live in greater New Haven, this invitation probably isn’t worth much, so let me share a few more takeaways from this experience for aspiring writers and for readers, too:
If you are a writer who wants to be published, you need two things. They must go together like Sisyphus and his boulder. I used to have a poster of Sisyphus pushing his boulder uphill that said, “This is how I roll.” (Not that I earned eternal punishment from the gods for particularly bad behavior as he did.) I’m kind of messing up the metaphor here because the two things are not equivalent to Sisyphus and his boulder. But keep him in mind.
The first thing you need to develop and nurture and keep rolling always, in order to become a published writer, is your writing skill. You must learn to be a good enough writer. You must read a lot and write a lot and probably take some workshops or classes. You’ll know you’re good enough to be published when you start submitting your work for publication and get in response what we call “nice rejections,” in which editors compliment your work and then tell you they’re not going to publish it anyway but invite you to try again. For most emerging writers today, rejection will happen A LOT, and not always of the “nice” kind. It will happen most of the time.
The second thing you need to develop is persistence. To become a published writer, you must be very, very, very persistent. If it’s important to you to have your work published by a publisher other than yourself (and I’m not suggesting that this should be everyone’s goal because it’s also wonderful to just write for the sake of writing, for you)—but if being traditionally published matters to you, you must keep on trying beyond the point at which any reasonable person would stop because getting published is partly a function of sheer dumb luck, and the persistent person who keeps showing up will be there when it’s finally time to get lucky. Assuming they’re also already a good enough writer. Sisyphus didn’t have a choice, but you do, and it will be very tempting to stop pushing that boulder uphill. I cannot overemphasize how hard it is to be that persistent. Keep trying anyway.
There’s a third thing you need as well, that goes along with the first two: community. Writing is a solitary endeavor, and there are few good social structures for writers to work together. When they are brought together—in MFA programs, workshops, and so on—they’re often in a competitive stance. We really need to find each other, which is not always easy, and then celebrate each other’s successes (every little one of them) and encourage each other to keep going.
How did I find Alice and Sandi (who writes as Maddie Dawson) and Heather? Heather and I met through church and became friends who both just happened to be writers. But I found Alice more intentionally. I was a reporter, and I wanted to meet her, so I got an assignment to interview her. We spent an hour together and enjoyed each other’s company, so we got together again for coffee. (I think probably first my piece got published, and fortunately, she liked it well enough.) I’ve interviewed lots of writers I wanted to meet, and it’s not normally a recipe for a lasting friendship. But in this case, it happened. Then Alice brought us Sandi because she and Sandi have been friends for decades. Not coincidentally, I also interviewed Sandi once, and she and I stayed in touch afterward.
Of course, not everyone can build community by becoming a reporter and interviewing people they want to meet. (I once got a boyfriend this way, too, but that’s another story.) The point is, put yourself in the orbit of other writers, however that will work for you. Do what you can to help them out, just because it’s nice to help a fellow writer. Read their work and send genuine compliments when you can. Over time, slowly, relationships will develop. If you can find one, attend a reading series! I religiously attended a previous monthly series that Alice and some other friends ran in the early 2000s. You can think of other ways to interact, I’m sure. Just don’t try to be a writer in isolation. It’s too hard.
With the Sleeping Giant Reading Series, we get a chance to take on all three of these necessities. Hearing other writers’ work is one way to become a better writer yourself—even for those of us who have already collected many “nice rejections” and a few (or, in Alice and Sandi’s case, many) publications. Getting this series off the ground obviously took some persistence. Most of all, we created it because we know how badly we, and every writer, need community.
Knowing about these three necessities is helpful even if you’re not a writer, but you are a reader. Sending your favorite writer a note of encouragement, a comment on social media, a thumbs up—especially a local writer trying to get their feet under them—does not go unnoticed. Unlike a performing artist, a writer often doesn’t get to hear directly from their audience, so these kudos can go a long way. Don’t be too shy to share them! And don’t underestimate how supportive you can be by simply showing up.
Our readers on Thursday—Hirsh Sawhney (pictured above) and Sandi, who has a new book out, were thrilled to have 40 attentive faces looking back at them—nodding their heads, laughing out loud, uttering little sounds of encouragement. Nobody’s doing that while these writers are at their keyboards. Hearing from an audience can make all the difference.
Keep it up, dear readers. We need you! And if you’re in town, we hope to see you one of these months in person!
Being an avid (dare I say obsessed) fan of the Sleeping Giant and a regular, in season, volunteer at the Welcome Kiosk (soon to be a Welcome Center) at the Park, the name certainly caught my eye. On at Saturday or Sunday, in between answering hikers' questions and sharing Giant history, I attempt bits of doggeral in haiku format based on what I notice. Nothing I've ever shared, but it's fun. I'll check out your next meeting. Thanks!
Oh - and what I'm reading this week: Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley - the sequel to Firekeeper's Daughter.
Wow! I’m excited to hear about the adventure you have launched. Brava! And although I live mostly in Italy, I am in New Haven for a chunk of each year, so I have some local friends who will want to know about this literary adventure. I spent much of my 33 years of teaching at Yale encouraging young writers, and I’ve been sharing your posts with an aspiring
writer who is the granddaughter of an old friend who lives in Italy. Who knows? You and your writer friends may be inspiring an international movement! Avanti!👏👍💪✍️