Also Counts As Writing - Part Three/Fiona McKay

Photo by Shyam Mishra on Unsplash

I’m procrastinating. Of course I am. I mean, I’m a writer, and nothing is harder than doing the work, so of course I procrastinate. Right now, I'm procrastinating something that’s more writing-adjacent, than actually writing itself. I'm not trying to get new words down on the page, for once. Right now, I have the lovely opportunity to write the acknowledgments for my Novella in Flash – The Lives of the Dead – which will be published this summer by AdHoc Fiction.

Writing acknowledgments is the best thing – I mean, it’s TERRIFYING because what if I FORGET someone and then have a huge OH NO moment when I see them across the room at the book launch? (If I say it now, it won’t happen, right? RIGHT???) But apart from that, it’s such a wonderful opportunity to acknowledge the huge community that goes into doing something that is essentially, and usually, a very solitary thing. Mostly, I sit at my desk in the attic of my house, make stuff up, and have conversations with imaginary people. So, it’s pretty fantastic that over the last few years I have found a community of other writers who are also making stuff up and talking to people who aren’t there. And, over Zoom, at workshops, at online festivals, in WhatsApp and Signal groups, I now have a huge found family to share the ups and downs of this wild rollercoaster ride with.

It started with Writers’HQ, back in late 2020, when they were making courses available for free during the pandemic. I had been dabbling at writing – writing novels: but with no writing community, it was in a vacuum, with no feedback, and not progressing. My plan was to keep on writing and revising novels, but I got distracted by a Flash Fiction course in January 2021, and, erm, I stayed distracted! I joined the great wave of flash writers in Flash Face Off, writing and giving feedback weekly. Not only did I find publication, but I found friends, people I hang out with online (mostly) to this day.

In 2022, I joined SmokeLong Fitness. I was very daunted, and nervous of sharing my work in the workshop groups where I would spy the names of writers whose work I admired so much. But of course, what happened was that I met kind, generous people whose feedback helped me revise my own writing for the better. Because that’s what feedback does – it’s like that Shakespeare line ‘…It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes…’ both the getting and the giving of feedback make your own work better.

Speaking of feedback, I was then invited to join a critique group with some writers who have since become great friends. Every month or so, we meet up to discuss pieces of our work, and the hit rate for acceptances of those pieces that have been critiqued by the Flash Amigas is high!

After that, I was asked if I wanted to be part of an accountability group – I was enthusiastic in my response as I had a number of projects I wanted to complete. Our regular meetings where we set goals, report on our progress, and keep ourselves on track with WhatsApp writing sprints, are highlights of my week.

And here, with The Pride Roars, I have a wonderful new group of friends to support and to be supported by!

And speaking of WhatsApp (and Signal, and Discord, and Twitter, and Bluesky, and Instagram, and, and…) – I’m lucky that so many of my favourite writing people live in my phone and my writing day is happily punctuated with so many notifications about writing and about life. In my virtual office, at my virtual watercooler (it’s full of coffee!), I have work colleagues of choice, and it makes the work of writing a pleasure.

I’ve procrastinated enough. I have a deadline for those acknowledgments. But thinking about all the wonderful people I have in my life to thank, reminds me that time we spend on our writing community – giving feedback, writing reviews, boosting each other on social media – the time we spend creating and nurturing each and every one of those links, Also Counts As Writing.