Writing is Membership

Notes on writing and friendship, and a book cover reveal

When I teach creative nonfiction, I open the class with a warning. I tell students that literary culture in the contemporary world has largely wilted before the onslaught of the digital image. And authorship has always been a competitive field, with many aspiring writers and few professionals And so I tell them that they should expect neither money, nor a large readership, nor professional success of any kind from their literary endeavors. Moreover, I tell them that creative nonfiction and the essay have always been the most overlooked literary genre—poetry and the novel get all the love—and so to practice this form is necessarily to consign oneself to the margins.

All of this I most powerfully and potently believe; and yet I encourage students to write, and to write creative nonfiction, nonetheless. I’ll say more on the value of such writing in a moment. But for now, a confession. Because despite all my warnings, I have ventured myself to commit an act of literature.

I’m pleased here to share the cover of my first book, Leaves of Healing: A Year in the Garden, forthcoming November 19, 2024, from Belle Point Press.

The book consists of a collection of essays that had their genesis on this Substack, as I wrote my way through the garden year and the church year. However, if you have read my work from the beginning, you’ll find much that’s new here. Every essay has been revised and substantially expanded—the newsletter entries were really just starting points—and I have added several new essays as well. The book furthermore goes into the story of my life surrounding the composition of the essays, hopefully filling out the biographical and thematic details of the writing for long-time readers.

The book will launch a new imprint from Belle Point called Lookouts. For Belle Point, as a regional press, the name connotes an outlook from a particular place, a view on the world from our region of Middle America. I love publishing in this imprint because I’m always drawn to writing that’s most interested in the world outside the writer—writing that’s animated by curiousity and wonder and delight rather than self-scrutiny or self-expression. My editor, Casie Dodd, and Belle Point have been a dream to work with, and I encourage you to check out the whole compelling vision and catalog of the press.

Writers write for many reasons. As I suggested at the beginning of this piece, I discourage students from thinking that they can write for the material benefits of money, notoriety, or professional success. It’s not that I disdain such benefits, but just that I think they aren’t very likely to come from writing. Given the odds, writers who aren’t totally delusional and irrational generally have other reasons for writing. They write because they have to—because it’s their way of thinking, or of interacting creatively with the world. They write because it helps them to pay attention. And they write for communion, because writing creates a membership, writing is a way of making friends.

It’s this last benefit to writing that I feel most forcefully these days. I think the main benefit I have gained from all the writing I have done is friendships. Writing has connected me to people I wouldn’t know otherwise, and has given depth to relationships from other spheres of my life. I have made friends through writing this newsletter, through writing for other publications, and now too through writing a book. I would hope too that the writing has been an occasion for friendship for my readers as well as myself. I have modest expectations for this book in terms of material benefits. But if the writing fosters membership, as it has already done for me, I will count it a success.

Not every book is for every person, and believing that—along with my habitual Midwestern diffidence—makes me always reluctant to self-promote. When I said this to a friend, however, he kindly invited me to see sharing my book not as self-promotion but as sharing something exciting with my friends. Seen in that light, I can say: I am very excited to share this book with you.

Preorders are now open on Belle Point’s website, and I’ll be very grateful to anyone who avails themselves of that opportunity. If you would like to talk with me about the book—whether just in an email, or on a podcast or at an event—I’m very available, and would be grateful for that opportunity for dialogue. And regardless of any of it, if you read this far, I’m grateful for your attention to my words. May they be a path to membership for us both.

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