Cirrus@Austlit

'Especially since the arrival of the global pandemic, we have had to reconsider what it means to be present for – and to – one another as writerly peers. For mid-career novelists with complex lives like us, this has meant rethinking what a ‘group’ is and what being part of one might mean: must we be physically present? Could we develop asynchronous practices that retained the intimacy of face-to-face interaction? This essay shares our collective experience, from articulating what we wanted from a writing group, to experimenting with different approaches to being together, and finally to adopting audio recordings – a specific type of ‘talk’ giving voice to our novels in progress – as our preferred method and reflecting on possible reasons for that. We developed this way of being together at a moment, post lockdowns, when it was again legal to meet in person. With more than one person. Many writer-reader groups pivoted online during the pandemic; our experience is part of that story, a reaction to it. Talking online using video chat platforms took energy; it was exhausting. The audio recording as ‘talk’ was surprisingly intimate and allowed us to connect collectively as our worlds opened back up. As creatives working on long-form sole-authored books, we are committed to the possibilities of the collective. No solitary geniuses here! We all need someone – or some ones – to wash the sheets, shop for coffee, make the soup, feed the birds. ' (Introduction)