I Built Lit Camp on the Cheap, and You Can Too

by Stephen Harrison

Late night Starbucks lights are just enough to let you move around and know that you’re not meant to nap here. The customers typically look harried at 2 a.m., and the menu is limited. But Starbucks is open nonetheless. Fluorescent white lighting and soft talking mixed with honestly pretty shitty coffee served as a launchpad for the rest of my academic career.

Photo by Stefen Tan on Unsplash

During my education as a journalism major, I spent many evenings visiting an open all night location near Rutgers University, but I didn’t spend my time there alone. The three of us—Dan, Carl, and I—all aspiring writers, needed someplace where we could work together. The importance of this was lost on me at the time, but in retrospect, it was critical to my development. Somewhere in the late night coffees and arguments about the merits of this piece or that piece, something was brewing for me.

Writing is, by necessity, a solitary activity. I can’t imagine trying to write while simultaneously socializing or being surrounded by distractions. But workshops are less about focusing and getting into “the zone” and more about bouncing ideas off of each other. It’s not just about another set of eyes, as helpful as that is, but about being inspired by your contemporaries' work.

Unfortunately, there is another side of writing that I’m familiar with as a graduate student. There can be an elitism about who is successful, who makes money, and perhaps most importantly, who has the resources to become successful. Time and money can be in short supply for anyone pursuing a career, and is perhaps especially precarious in the creative arts where the path to success isn’t so well defined as other professions. Accounting or business has a clearer path to financial stability, while the creative arts are less certain.

Janis Cooke Newman’s op-ed on lithub.com “What Happens When Your Writers Retreat Burns to the Ground?” sends all the wrong messages to young writers who might happen to read her piece. Baked into the article is an element of glamour and exclusivity that I think many aspiring writers can only dream of: “Writers in the hot tub, washing down their workshop feedback with a good California red under a vault of stars” she writes of the retreat  “For four days, forty writers (chosen from more than 200 applicants) workshopped each other’s pages in the cool morning sunshine. Flexed their chair-stiffened bodies in a yoga room with a view of green hills. Drank a great deal of good California wine (and beer) in the hot tub, well past the time the property wanted them back in their rooms.”

For a writer in training like myself, this sounds very rock and roll. But  the unspoken part of this is how much time and money it takes to attend such a glamorous retreat. Now hosted in San Miguel, Mexico, the current iteration of “Lit Camp” runs between $1,295 and $2,595. To be fair, there is nothing wrong with going if you have the resources to attend such a camp. But as the article boasts, “Half-a-dozen of them got book deals—one for seven figures. And many of the rest published in literary magazines and signed with agents.” Such success evidently comes with a price.

I don’t have any evidence that what I’ve experienced will lead to the kind of success Cooke Newman speaks of with Lit Camp. But I can speak to the experience of myself and friends who don’t have access to those kinds of resources trying to navigate the path towards what seems like an insurmountable summit. The goal at the top: becoming a “writer.”I would have given up much sooner if I hadn’t stumbled upon camaraderie and the back and forth between contemporaries before I even got to graduate school.

As Cooke Newman writes, “Better still, everybody got community… Thanks to Lit Camp, the writing life got a little less isolated.” This is the key component of Lit Camp, not so much the wine or the hot tubs, but the community. It’s the coming together and sharing of ideas and feedback that is valuable, the rest is window dressing. It can be intimidating trying to figure out what resources you have to attempt to become successful in writing. and there’s no denying that higher education is expensive regardless of where you go. There’s no need for trepidation to extend to whether you can afford or even be accepted to a swanky writer’s retreat or an academic program.

It’s important for young writers to understand that you can get the Lit Camp experience without spending Lit Camp money or time. You can have your own Lit Camp anywhere you want, you just need to find other writers interested in experiencing sharing their work, in getting feedback and providing it. I had my own first Lit Camp without realizing it as three friends labored over a community college newspaper deep into the night under the fluorescent Starbucks lights.

For me, it was an all-nighter with sleepy baristas and inscrutable co-occupants, but it just as easily could have been a cafeteria, a park, or anywhere else people can gather. The important part is the community. If you want to start your own Lit Camp it begins with finding other writers who want to share the experience. If there’s anything that stops you from writing, don’t let it be lack of access to places like Lit Camp.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash