We recently connected with Alison Harney and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Alison thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

I feel like most of what I’m doing with Writing Room ATL is not industry standards. I charge very little for my writing groups and have no kind of application for incoming writers. I do almost nothing on social media to promote myself or my business, and I do not encourage my writers to chase publication. I have purposely tried to create a home for writers that is outside of academics or the market, and is instead about community and relationships.

Alison, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a writer, and lead small online writing groups for women. Their stories, essays, insights, kindness, and commitment to one another is inspiring. I provide mini-lessons on a wide range of topics as well as writing prompts, which some use while others work on pre-existing novels or collections. We meet weekly for the duration of the session and do a combination of timed writing and sharing/workshopping. Among these women are published writers, first-time writers, lawyers, priests, stay-at-home-moms, museum and science writers, retired teachers and doctors, yoga instructors, and therapists. Every one of them is full of valuable perspectives and stories.

I regularly lead two groups and also offer writing challenges at least once a year. I could offer more sessions but I have a job, family, and my own writing projects, and also work with a man in prison who is writing a memoir so I don’t have the time. I do not expect Writing Room ATL to be a full-time job so the income from it is always a surprise and used to further support my writing life. I took my family to a tiny Colorado town where my current novel is set, attended a writing retreat in upstate NY, and no longer flinch when having to pay $25 to enter a poetry book contest. Luckily, I have wonderful employers who know me and encourage my writing life–my Friday noon class is there on the work calendar.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

After earning an MFA in creative writing, I truly believed I could only enter book contests or get an agent, publish a book, and then try to find a job as a professor. That was the path even if it meant living in a small town with no friends and earning a tiny salary, otherwise I would have “failed” as a writer. I still believed that to be a writer meant someone paid you for your work rather than that you wrote continually. I still believed the market defined value.

I was very disappointed after getting an agent for my first novel, and then finding that she was unable/unwilling to sell it. This crushed feeling bumping against turning 40 made me re-evaluate for a full year what writing meant to me, why do it? What I came to is that writing bonds and heals. Writing is a form of communication and therefore relational which is actually quite different from how we often think of writers–siloed in their studies. I started Writing Room ATL and due to the pandemic, it ended up being mostly online which has had the beautiful and unexpected result of writers joining from Alaska, Vermont, South Carolina, California, Tennessee, and Michigan.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I am driven to continue offering my groups because I believe there is likely a good reason that a person feels compelled to write, and because every life experience is interesting. The details in front of your eyes in this exact moment are interesting in ways you probably cannot know until you write them down. Writing demands a certain level of presence and attention that is mentally and emotionally healthy. Others wish to peer into your experience either to understand it or relate to it. Give them that. Give yourself that. A year or ten from now your own experience will be lost even to you, and we often don’t write about the same things that we photograph—it is a different record of our existence.

My prison mentee, Steven, had the great insights that writing allows self-expression and when people cannot express themselves they often turn to more dangerous modes of expression such as drugs and violence. He also said that writing makes us move at a slower pace that allows us to make intentional decisions rather than simply react. Writing is counter cultural. The market place wants us to be impulsive. I thought both of those insights were profound.

We get to know others through writing in ways that are deeply intimate and validating. In a culture that is talking of a “loneliness epidemic” there is much to be said for sharing your work and supporting others’ process. Some people in my groups do revise, submit, and publish their work, but we gather to cheer each other on whatever the individual route—be that working through loss or writing a middle grade novel. We serve as witnesses for each other’s lives, imaginations, and efforts.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.writingroomatl.com
• Instagram: writingroomatl