"For all of you writers, artists, photographers, and people captured by a certain place on the map, would you tell me about the setting that keeps cropping up in your work?"
Recently, Susan Henderson asked her readers to answer that evocative question. More than forty comments later, her blog traveled from Ann Arbor to London--a literary atlas hidden inside her comments section. In a beautiful reply, Henderson explained the secret to her success: "LitPark is only as good as the people who play here."
Welcome to the second installment of my interview with Pushcart-nominated author, Susan Henderson. This is my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a serialized set of weekly interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing...
Jason Boog:
You have an impressive web community between your MySpace, LitPark, and web writings. How did you build your online audience? How do you initiate these beautiful conversations in the comments section of LitPark? Continue reading... 
A portrait of the artist as a young munchkin.
Susan Henderson:
I've had friendships with writers and editors for years, and putting a blog together was my way of taking what had become years of chatting with writers via email or in small groups and making those conversations public. Inviting more people to the table. I like the idea of pulling editors, readers, visual artists, and writers at all stages of their careers together into a conversation.
The new writers benefit from the information that's shared freely, the big time writers benefit from remembering how humbling and scary it is to be stuck with a manuscript or simply stuck under a glass ceiling. And I think all of us benefit from sharing the process of creating--to know we're not alone on our emotional roller coaster.
I'm so glad you mentioned the comments section of LitPark because I'm so moved by the community that's grown there--the friendships and networking and the brave and vulnerable sharing between writers and artists of all stages of the game. They really do define the blog, and I can't take credit for the insight and the heart they bring.
I do try to foster dialogue and a sense of community by how I structure the blog. Every Monday, there is a question of the week. Maybe it'll be about our inner critics or writer's block or our favorite settings. And whoever I interview on Wednesday will talk about this question as well. I do this to keep the readers and the guests in one conversation.
And then on Friday, I answer the question myself, in light of whatever transpired in the comments section. What I hope is that people, at the end of the week, have an experience of being heard.
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