The Writer’s Life - Lonely No More For many writers, the work of writing is a solitary one. More than most professions, writing seems to lend itself the idea that the written word is the life of the mind put to page and that its ends are best achieved locked away somewhere, just doing the work. In a recent piece in the New York Times, Bonnie Tsui, author of American Chinatown, challenges that popular notion by discussing her experience working in a writers collective. (Image: Bonnie Tsui) Tsui, for a large portion of her professional life, had been a magazine editor in New York City. She says that the office atmosphere never appealed to her, and that she was always plagued by insecurities that writers so often face regarding acceptance and envy of their peers. However, after leaving New York to live in the Bay Area, Tsui joined the San Francisco writers grotto.

1. Benjamin Mautner
The Writer’s Life - Lonely No More

2. • For many writers, the work of writing is a solitary
one. More than most professions, writing seems
to lend itself the idea that the written word is the
life of the mind put to page and that its ends are
best achieved locked away somewhere, just
doing the work. In a recent piece in the New
York Times, Bonnie Tsui, author of American
Chinatown, challenges that popular notion by
discussing her experience working in a writers
collective.

3. • Tsui, for a large portion of her professional life,
had been a magazine editor in New York City.
She says that the office atmosphere never
appealed to her, and that she was always
plagued by insecurities that writers so often face
regarding acceptance and envy of their peers.
However, after leaving New York to live in the
Bay Area, Tsui joined the San Francisco writers
grotto.

4. • Joining the collective allowed Tsui the
opportunity to share working space with writers
of all stripes, working in all genres. She says that
what she found there was unlike any experience
she had working at a magazine - a confidence in
herself and faith in her own voice as a writer.

5. • She attributes this to talking in a writerly context.
Tsui asserts that she has many social dates with
friends and is hardly a recluse, but interacting
with writers within her collective has allowed her
to talk through her ideas so that they are more
streamlined and clear before she attempts to put
them on the page. She finds that she does not
simply talk about narrative, structure and
grammar with her fellow writers, but also explore
day to day endeavors that shape the spirit of
what she writes.

6. • Tsui describes composing her own work and
wondering what others in her group would think
about a line, or who they would approach a
particular literary problem. The result is a way of
finding an individual voice via committee.
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• “I” has become, at times, a comfortable “we.”
Tsui says.