build more friendships
Lucie started off Friendships I want to build at Inkhaven with this admission:
Inkhaven has been running for 11 days. 19 to go. During this time, I’ve made... 0 new friends. I went all the way across the world to stay in a place filled with people who also care about there being more great writing on the Internet, and I barely talked to anyone I did not already know.
That reminds me of my recent sentiment from cheaper writing workshops:
For how much Inkhaven is advertised as a writing residency, I believe it's less about writing and more about connecting through that common interest. I would figure that writers should do whatever possible to maximize time spent outside of writing their daily 500+ word posts. That includes socializing, enjoying memorable experiences, and even collaborating with fellow writers, advisors, and organizers.
Lucie wanting friendships to overcome the challenge of writing and live the good life exemplifies the above. She writes how improving at the former goal has unlocked the latter:
Getting into writing so much has been hard, but now I’m starting to get the hang of it. I can publish a piece I’m happy with in 2h. I now have a tiny bit of Slack. Now is the time to get off from the screen, touch grass, and make friends.
However, I think her desires are more mutualistic than meets the eye. Even without having earned slack, she can synthesize inspiring content from fun analog pastimes as well as her subject matter expertise.
The camaraderie she seeks can overflow beyond her physical, tangible surroundings. See how she navigates life between offline travel opportunities, online accountability circles, and more. Making Internet friends is also a potentiality, as Croissanthology explains in De-lurk from the internet:
Statistically, the person reading this is a lurker; to them I say you should write more online. You should join the side of the internet that is insane. You should join Twitter specifically, and chat with me, and provide value to me, and read my stuff. You should be checking up on what these humans are up to. The internet is a place you can edit, not just learn from; and you learn a lot more by giving yourself write-access to it! Join us.
Speaking of flexible company, these other lines from cheaper writing workshops come to mind:
That said, I think the personal engagement you would find at Inkhaven can be readily found in local or online spaces for far cheaper. For that matter, can you envision how a variation of that workshop could work for prospective or established writers like you?
Lucie concludes her post:
Friends are cool, you know
And we’d probably feel a bit less isolated in this residency, if we had more of those.
Posting daily technically keeps Lucie and other residents at Inkhaven. However, there's a good chance that they are largely surrounded by people they wouldn't have otherwise met. Riffing on Ben's 8 Questions for the Future of Inkhaven, could making more friends get both pride and satisfaction to bloom?
JD's One Week In shows how the practice can be more accessible than they think:
You don’t need millions of people. You just need your people. And there are a lot of people in the world.
Find them. Befriend them. Reciprocate with them.