Writer, teacher, and librarian Pat Ezell (aka wirelesslibrarian) attracted our attention with several charming Storybirds about mice, pigs, and talking trees. Given her pedigree, we asked her about the social side of writing and the influence of feedback on emerging writers.

Ernest Hemingway got up early in the morning so he could write in quiet. Truman Capote swore that he did all his writing lying down, crafting his stories either in bed or on the couch. Shakespeare would shut himself away in his chambers for days at a time when he was writing. Okay, I totally made up the bit about Shakespeare, but it sounds plausible, right? Writing has typically been thought of as a solitary and frequently clandestine endeavor.  But is lonely writing the only good kind?

When I was in third grade, my teacher chose to “publish” a story I had written, thanks to the purple magic of the mimeograph machine. Yeah, I’m kind of ancient. Anyway,  everyone in Mrs. Hall’s class got a fragrant, violet-inked copy of my masterpiece, and the whole experience was very powerful for me. Because my teacher saw value in my writing, I began to see myself as a writer. It made me want to write more, to write better, to create the most amazing stories ever read. That’s what a little bit of encouragement can do for you, and I think that writing in and for a collaborative community like Storybird can nurture the same desire to be a writer that Mrs. Hall instilled in me.

The world is seemingly a very different place today. Shakespeare and Hemingway and Capote did not have such a broad sounding board as we now enjoy, but I suspect that authors have always looked for affirmation and guidance. Jane Austen always read her work to her sister first. Rick Riordan shared The Lightning Thief with his nine-year-old son and then tried it out with his middle school students before he submitted it for publication. Stephen King always shares his first drafts with the grave digger at a local cemetery. Umm, that part about Stephen King is complete fabrication, but it sounds right, doesn’t it? The point is that maybe authorship isn’t done best in isolation. Maybe being able to connect with others to share our writing can make us better writers. With Storybird and other forms of social media at our fingertips, we’ve just got a bigger family to bounce things off of.

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Image: Fancy Fish by Victoria Usova