Writing Lessons: The "Lowering Medicine" of Community

"We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane...."

I recently had a conversation with a new writer friend about favorite paragraphs—not favorite books or authors, but individual paragraphs. It reminded me of one of my own favorites.

In George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch (1871-72), our protagonist, the young and recently widowed Dorothea Brooke gets some advice from her busybody neighbor Mrs. Cadwallader, who urges her to get out of her self-imposed isolation.

"You will certainly go mad in that house alone, my dear. You will see visions. We have all got to exert ourselves a little to keep sane…. Sitting alone in that library…you may fancy yourself ruling the weather; you must get a few people round you who wouldn't believe you if you told them. That is a good lowering medicine." (slightly abridged for length)

I remember thinking of this paragraph when my kids were really small. I was new to Austin and often batty from the combination of isolation and sleep deprivation that can come with having very young children. There was a point at which my natural instinct to hole-up in my cave came into conflict with my desire not to go barking mad and that conflict motivated me to exert myself and make friends with other mothers of young children.

Mrs. Cadwallader, from the 1994 BBC adaptation

My natural tendencies toward curmudgeonly-ness and hermit-tude have been intensified by the pandemic, working from home, and moving out of the city. I have again had occasions to consider both the artistry of that perfect paragraph and the unlikely wisdom of Mrs. Cadwallader’s advice.

Not wishing to start suspecting that I control the weather with my thoughts—which, in Texas, really would indicate a disordered mental state—I have exerted myself a little to keep sane and this exertion has set me on a new venture.

Over the past week, I’ve been delighted to host writing events at my beloved independent bookstore, Lark and Owl. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to discover, or remember, that I like people—I mean, maybe not all of them, but these people: readers and writers.

While the act of writing is a solitary pursuit, being a writer is easier with a community. I have come away from these initial meetings feeling less crazy and more inspired to keep up my own writing practice. It has been, as Mrs. Cadwallader noted of the company of others skeptical of my claims of controlling the weather with my thoughts, “good lowering medicine.”

Photo by Matt Briney on Unsplash