Campfire Stories: In Which Feedback and a Writing Community Make All the Difference

Our Municipal Liaisons volunteer every November to run in-person write-ins, encourage the writers in their local regions, and generally be conductors of creative energy. This past April, several of them joined in on Camp NaNoWriMo to bring their special brand of imagination fuel. Today, Amanda Tong, ML in Hong Kong, shares how just one writerly friend can make all the difference:

Here’s a confession: part of why I volunteered to be a NaNoWriMo ML was to get to know some writers. I’d come home to Hong Kong after four years of undergrad. The only people I knew there were secondary school friends, a number that I could count on my fingers. Since I had just rediscovered the joys of writing—weaving my own stories, witty wordplay, and the amazing thought ‘Hey, I might be onto something good’—I wanted to find others who felt that way. I wanted to find writers. And making sure that there would actually be write-ins for me to attend was one way to do it!

It was a delight to meet these students, teachers, travelers, etc. especially when they dropped those titles to unite as writers. We were a tiny but happy little group, all chugging towards that 50,000 in between the coffee consumption and serious debates over what was the scariest monster from Doctor Who. Important writer stuff.

But by January, it seemed like most people had put their writer selves into hibernation until further notice, maybe next November, even. One Wrimo already had an established writing group where I did see some writers surface for air every few weeks, but not always. I knew I couldn’t force anything (Hong Kong is a city of involuntary workaholics) so I tried not to get too excited when I made a post about Camp NaNoWriMo on our Facebook group in early March.

Just one post and the writers came creeping back. What’s more, they came back and took things into their own hands. Somebody remarked that the weekly writing session was at a rather inconvenient time for them, so would anyone like to join them on Sunday mornings? Another Wrimo agreed, saying the location was far, too, so what about this nifty café on Thursdays? In that case, added a third, could we consider rotating venues?

Suddenly, I had three opportunities a week to see my lovely writer friends again. I still hosted an “official” write-in of my own featuring origami “plot bunnies” as an Easterly nod, but NaNoHK’s April 2014 Camp was essentially borne on the shoulders of its awesome Wrimos. They challenged each other with word sprints, celebrated when someone hit their daily word count, and brainstormed character/item names together. We broke free from the crazy pace of Hong Kong to be one entity again, sort of like a hive mind of wonderful writerness. Maybe like the Ood. (Love an Ood.)

Then when their bold and fearless ML faced her own story hurdles, they gave her wise and practical advice for moving the story along, focusing on the characters.

I’ve always been a people person, so feedback is a central element in getting through a new piece. A simple conversation about the concept might be all that takes for motivation to kick in again. It’s enough to see somebody else genuinely interested in what you have to say, that they’re thinking, ‘Hey, you might be onto something good.’

Amanda Tong currently works as a kindergarten music teacher as she completes her MFA in Creative Writing at HKU. November 2013 was her first year as a NaNoWriMo ML, part of a plot to make new literary-minded friends in the city where she grew up. It worked magnificently. One day, she would like to be the proud author of published novels, short stories, plays, and possibly even a graphic novel. She would also like to own a Roomba painted to look like the Millennium Falcon.