I first heard the term “literary citizen” during a Kauai Writers Conference session, after the conference transitioned fully online during the COVID lockdown days.¹ The speaker mentioned the phrase during a talk on how to acquire a literary agent. Although I wasn’t ready to approach an agent yet, the idea of participating in the bookish landscape as a good literary citizen intrigued me; I very much hoped to insert myself into the community of writers without appearing overeager. Besides buying their books, I wanted to explore other authentic ways to support writers and expand my connections with them.

Here are a few things I’ve learned so far.

Protect Writers’ Work/Don’t Steal

A major writing organization, from whom I’d taken a single online workshop and whom I shall not name, had their website set up such that all of their previous class recordings were magically available to me. Their entire catalog of dozens of courses by many writers over many years was there for me to just…take. I knew that this was not what they intended. As a retired IT person, I suspected that this largesse of free training was actually inadequate web site security. Had other people assumed that they had hit the Zoom training motherlode after taking one $99 course? I chose to think that no one had noticed, because I didn’t want to lower my reading glasses judgmentally at other writers. I let the organization know of the situation, and they were extremely grateful. The organization’s contact person responded, “Thank you for being a good literary citizen!” and I did feel a little puffing up in my chest over that. Writers deserve to be paid for their work, and me taking a bunch of stuff for free would have been wrong. Do unto others, like the guy said.

Let Writers Know that You Appreciate Their Work

My copy of Matt Bell’s terrific craft book, Refuse to Be Done, has an abundance of text that made me sit up straight, read carefully, and then re-read. I highlighted and underlined many sections of the text, and affixed sticky notes to sections of particular interest to me. I really got a lot from this book, and I wanted to share my appreciation of Bell’s work with him but not come off as a total suck-up. I filmed a short of me flipping through the pages to show the many pages I’d marked, then posted the clip. He seemed genuinely pleased, and restacked my post. I felt good about this. I shared my appreciation of the book in a way that I hope will encourage other writers to buy it, too. (Buy it now!)

Ask Real Questions at Author Events (In-person and Online)

A terrible, awful, no-good thing that some readers do during the Q & A portion of an author event is to immediately launch into a long-winded pitch for their own Vegan Tradwife Vampire book series, of which they have a “solid outline” of book one. Maybe a friend said the book was a timely and inventive idea and definitely worth pursuing, and now that writer feels entitled to hijack someone else’s book event. People, do not do this. A person who’s actually completed and published a whole book, and is now on book tour, is trying to sell that work. Not to smash anyone’s dreams no matter where they are in the writing process (because I don’t want anyone to smash mine), but it seems most helpful to the author (not to mention the audience) if you ask an actual question about the book she’s hawking, or at least something about her writing process.

Also: don’t let the guest writer on a Zoom event see only a bunch of blurred backgrounds where heads should be. Show your face, if you’re comfortable with it. And, ask questions! There are not many things worse, I imagine, than having hundreds of people on an event call, but all of them are afraid to speak up or even ask a question in the chat. Engage!

Don’t Post Bad Things About Other People’s Books or Writing

Sure, there are books I’ve read that I didn’t care for, or thought were poorly written. Like, a lot of them. But I see no need to publicly post those thoughts. Generally, I am talking about fiction works here. I share any thoughts I have about book I don’t like with friends, face-to-face. I don’t want to be the cause of lost income for any writer and affect their ability to send their kids to gymnastics. Authors likely spent years working on a novel, and while it may not appeal to me at all, it could still be a major success. I know there are sites that exist for people to rail against others’ books, but if you’re a writer, I think it’s bad form.

However, if the topic of the work is something detestable, then it’s fair game, even if it’s fiction. If one of Elon’s data-stealing boys decides to write a novel, or Pete Hegseth pens a work highlighting the blessings of Christian nationalist tattoos, I think it’s fair to call them out. Not just fair, but maybe a democratic obligation. Fortunately (?), this is unlikely to happen; I doubt that any of the people who are currently revoking the visas of international students at the university where I worked have read a novel in years. Relatedly: If you’re not registered to vote, please consider doing that today. Local elections matter, too, especially School Board elections, and they may be happening soon in your area. If you’re able, consider joining PEN America, the staff of which are tracking book bans across the country.

Don’t Soft-stalk Authors, in Person or Online

Here’s the city where I accosted the author while she tried to get lunch snacks.

I’m not great at this one. When I see an author in person whose work has greatly influenced me, I get that pre-teen Tiger Beat feeling again. If only David Cassidy were to meet me in person, he’d quickly realize that we were soul mates.

I don’t exactly feel that an author would be my soul mate, but on some level I think that they’ll just go - OH! - you’re the person writing that novel and it’s just so great to meet you in person and what can I do to elevate your work! Or maybe I think that talking to them in person will somehow split my own work open, and I will be able to say in my future full rooms at my own book signings that I can trace it all back to that very moment, and now here I am, a best-selling author, as you see by the standing-room only situation we have here.

However, it’s really best, when attending the Texas Book Festival, to not accost the famous author while they’re mid-bite in the lunch line at the Author’s Green Room, even if you are there as a bona fide volunteer, badge and all. It feels a little creepy to me, in retrospect, so I’m sure it was worse for the author. I won’t mention the author’s name here because I still feel a medium to high level of cringe thinking about my hovering. Sorry, person.

I do think it’s perfectly fine and even a good thing to gush over a writer in a public space, such as during the Q & A time of their session when they are surrounded by readers, and when they hopefully feel safe and even powerful and bright and shiny. Similarly, I think it’s okay to over-gush in person when you’re in line at a book signing because you only get a few seconds with the author. Plus there’s usually security right there. I can’t imagine how exhausting all this must be for the writer, but I hope they are able to take away some happy feelings from our enthusiastic comments.

Do you have additional ways that you try to be a good literary citizen?

I know that these are nerve-wracking times for us in these United States, so I send you thoughts for peace. Here’s a be-a-better-human link for today. Listen to Mel Robbins’ interview of Jackson Fisher: How to Be a Better Human. I listened twice; it’s that good. And Fisher’s book is definitely one to read before you run into those triggering folks again.

Peace be with you.

¹The Kauai Writers Conference has resumed their annual November in-person retreat, while continuing the Sunday evening online sessions.

“You gonna read all those books?”

I was standing in front of former President Jimmy Carter at a now-defunct chain bookstore in my hometown. He was on a signing tour for his latest work, but he was a prolific writer who wrote 32 books, and I had a big stack in my arms. I was buying them for Christmas gifts for pretty much everyone I knew. I stood in line a long time, not because I wanted all those books. I wanted to be able to speak to this honorable man, if only for a few seconds, to be in the presence of such a great humanitarian.

When he was inaugurated in 1977, he placed his hand on two Bibles, stacked one upon the other. The first was a family Bible, a gift from his mother, and the second was the Bible used by George Washington at his own swearing-in ceremony. Both were held by his beloved wife Rosalyn, and each was opened to this verse from Micah:

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?

After the most recent Presidential election, I found myself bitter about the upcoming four years and the harm that will likely come to our country, our environment, to people on the margin, to people I care about. I didn’t want to talk to anyone that I even suspected might have voted for him. I assumed the worst, and if I didn’t know your political views, I assumed the worst about you. And I wanted nothing to do with you.

But then Jimmy Carter, age 100, died. In the days following his death, we heard news stories of all the great things he did throughout his life, and I began to think about how he lived and how I want to live.

I identify as a Christian, but I am reluctant to reveal that to many people. I don’t want to be even remotely associated with fundamentalist or evangelical Christians. I don’t think that my Higher Power cares if you believe in her/him/they/it or not. I think that what this creator cares about is that I live the best life I can, that I help others, and that I try to enjoy my own life. I think my HP wants me to Do Good.

My former neighbor and friend is a member of the women’s fraternity, Delta Gamma, whose motto is exactly that: Do Good. Any positive view I have of any sorority or fraternity is due to this woman’s life, which I know she’d say has been directed by a life rule of doing good, as embodied in her organization’s guiding principle. And she and her fraternity and Jimmy Carter and his life have re-ignited me. I haven’t put aside the disappointment and anger about the incoming administration, but I will do my best to not let it control how I behave and feel.

So my next four years are going to be focused on trying to be a Jimmy Carter Christian and on trying to Do Good.

The Venn diagram of Jimmy Carter’s life and my friend’s rule of life embodies how I want to try to live.

• Be kind to others, unless they have proven to me that they are not people I should be kind to.

• Let people have their opinions. I don’t have to agree. If they have extremely horrific philosophies, though, I may choose not to spend time around them. And I do not have to seek out hatred, intolerance, or anti-science tirades. I can scroll past social media posts, where I have no ability to effect change in a person’s ideas. (I’m grateful for the recovery slogan, “Take what you like and leave the rest.”) This is a hard one for me, but I’m actively working on it.

• Defend the rights of the marginalized, especially, but not limited to, the poor, LGBTQ+ folx, and Black and indigenous people, as I am able. I will speak up when I hear a person in my presence speak overt misogyny, racism, homophobia or fundamentalism.

I still haven’t read the book shown above, Sources of Strength, even though I promised President Carter that I would. I have my autographed copy, and this year I’ll read it. I’ll think of him and the kind of life he lived. I’m going to need all the strength I can muster.

I’m not sure I want to go to church anymore. I am ashamed of anyone who identifies as Christian who voted for this man. I don’t want to be around them. I don’t want to like them, to make nice, to pretend like everything is okay. I don’t want to offer them the Peace of the Lord. Nope.

I don’t want to talk to my pro-Trump neighbor, the one with the shredded American flag that I guess he thinks is super cute, and the Trump flag, high on the flagpole.

I don’t want to engage with anyone that I suspect voted for him.

I don’t want to see their gloating Facebook posts, knowing that more women will bleed out in hospital emergency rooms. Gay people will be targeted more than ever. I don’t want to watch how aghast Latino people who voted for him will be when their relatives are deported in droves.

Today on Facebook, many people have changed their profile picture to a black circle. It’s a dark day.

I don’t want to watch TV. I don’t want to hear about what went wrong in Harris’s campaign. What went wrong is old white people are still unwilling to vote for a woman, and especially one of color. Patriarchy still rules, and it’s been fueled by the Christian church. I hate it. Even though I belong to a progressive denomination, I’m not sure I can stick it out.

I don’t want to watch the inauguration. I don’t want to see what this vile man will do. I don’t want to see him sit in the oval office. I don’t want to watch him make us, again, become enemies of the good nations while he cozies up to dictators.

I am now assuming the worst about people. This is a new thing for me.

I went to the 7-11 this morning, to get Diet Pepsi after a night of fitful and insufficient sleep. Several old men, apparently unhoused, were standing outside. I overheard one grizzled old guy in a torn cowboy hat say, “I used to party with them people on Fry Street,” a nearby college area, known for its abundance of bars. The nation’s first head shop is located there, too. Maybe for them, their lives are unchanged today, because they’re already in desperate situations, but it’s hard for me to see how everyone else is unaffected. The rich will get richer, the hateful will spew more hate, and now, I have become one of them.

I thought about people in Ukraine today, and Gaza, and Israel, and all the countries where war is active and fierce, places where people are starving, where women have never had any rights and likely never will.

Despite the hate- and sorrow - in my heart right this minute, I am able to write these words from a place of extreme privilege. I am white, retired, college-education. I am not wealthy, but I own a home, a car, have a stable life. I have innumerable books and a fridge full of food. I am healthy and active. I have friends. I am not about to say I’m grateful or blessed, because I can’t get to that feeling today. Maybe later.

How do we get through this. How?

I don’t know. I just know that writing this down is the first step I had to take today, because I don’t want to stay in hate forever. Just for a little longer.

Participating in the course paralleled my recent acquisition of an Al-Anon sponsor, and an earnest effort at beginning to work the Twelve Steps. I zoomed through Steps One through Three: LFG! I’m all in! And then I came to Step Four, and I felt that familiar resistance, that same demon that often greets me when I have even a passing thought that perhaps I should writing rather than doomscrolling. Molasses, in thought form.

My resistance is caused by fear. Fear that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I don’t belong here, that I’m too old, I’ve waited too long, all the “real” writers are already here and well-established, and there’s no room for one more. The Internet is full; go away. And also, fear that other people’s lives urgently require that I put my own life on hold, indefinitely, in case something bad happens (hello, codependency!).

A few years ago, I caught myself saying aloud to my therapist, “I don’t know what to do, but I have to hurry!” We both laughed at the absurdity of this statement when I said it. It was regarding my job, (before my retirement), and the increasing anxiety I felt to to do something, fast, and yet to not really know how to do it because my field was changing so quickly. I couldn’t keep up with my younger co-workers, who were zippier, less wrinkly, and who blessedly had no likelihood of cataracts for the foreseeable future. It took some effort to remind myself that I, too, had once been the fast one, and now things were shifting.

Saying “I have to hurry, but I don’t know what to do” opened me to an understanding that resistance often pushes me in one of two opposing modes: paralysis or rushing.

Just for today I will have a program. I may not follow it exactly, but I will have it. I will save myself from two pests: hurry and indecision.
- Al-Anon, Just for Today

In these last two weeks, with democracy under threat and anxiety levels high, my resistance has directed me more often to Ka-Boom shower cleaner and a stiff scrub brush than to my notebook. It caused me to remove every single vegetable bin and piece of glass from my refrigerator in a two-hour diversion cleaning. It’s been somewhat fruitful: My fridge is spotless, my oven is goo-free, my bathroom is sanitized, the sheets are fresh and crisp. But these things will not remain so forever, and I will face resistance again, maybe later today, even.

I am not here to tell you that I have figured out the end-all solution to writing resistance, any more than I have figured out how to conquer it when I open my Blueprint for Progress and continue my Step Four journey. But I have recognized that I can, and will try, try like a motherfucker, to give myself some grace. I will not run from the resistance, at least not all the time. My heart’s wish is to be a bit kinder when I feel that, to not run away, to STAY, as the meditation teacher Pema Chodron exhorts me. Stay, stay. Stay with it.

And so.

Writing becomes the thing that it wants to be, and when I imagined this Substack, I had no idea that I’d be focusing on the intersection of writing and Al-Anon recovery, but here I am. I hope this will speak to others of you in recovery who write. Keep coming back, to the literature, and to the rooms.

A benediction, a closing prayer: Peace be with you all, and especially to those of us in the US as we approach next week’s Presidential election. Keep breathing, keep writing, stay aware of writing resistance. I’ll try, too. When you get anxious, come back here, and admire my clean fridge, and listen to Herb Alpert and the walk-on song to The Dating Game.

Al-Anon Family Groups exist to support friends and family members of alcoholics. We practice the same 12 Steps as those in Alcoholics Anonymous, with only one minor word change in the twelfth step. The essence is the same; we are recovering from how alcoholism has affected our own lives.

I didn’t expect to write about Al-Anon here, but it’s already become a big part of my spiritual foundation. I see how studying the 12 Steps and 12 Traditions, attending meetings, reading the literature, and working with a sponsor can help me shift away from my writing fears.

Progress, not perfection.

—Al-Anon Slogan

But back to this newsletter. I’m writing a novel. I wasn’t MFA-trained to do that, although I’ve attended plenty of workshops, read plenty of craft books, and subscribe to the paid Substack newsletters of some of my favorite writers. I hang on their every word! Although I feel nervous about what I’m doing both here and in my manuscript, I’m compelled to “keep coming back” to the various rooms where I write it, just as I keep returning to the meeting rooms of Al-Anon. Somehow, I know that writing this newsletter will help me with my novel in progress, and my ongoing recovery.

In Al-Anon, anonymity is essential. At each meeting, we remind each other, whom you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here.

This is also what I’ve learned about my work in progress. I am not telling you about my story right now, even though I have lots of characters, scenes, and settings. So don’t ask, okay? If I tell you about it, I’m violating something sacred, a promise that I’ve made to myself that I’ll write this. And if I tell you about it, my brain will think I have already done all the work.

Recovery and writing a novel are like a car wash. It’s messy at the start, and you can’t see where you’re going, but a process is indeed unfolding. And hopefully, there will come a point when the windshield is clear(er) and I can see where I’m headed, at least far enough ahead to take the “next right step.”

If someone you love has a drinking problem, consider attending an Al-Anon meeting. Here’s the meeting finder.