Last night at Two Page Tuesday,^[1] we had the largest crowd yet at one of the readings (or, to be honest, any of the related events that have been running since January). We had around 20 at the first reading, about 15 at the second, 25 or so at the third, and last night, according to Megan’s count, we had somewhere in the are of 35 to 40 fucking people there, which is insane.^[2] All seven of the readers were excellent, and pretty much all of the new (to the party) readers brought friends. Somehow a creative writing club at one of the colleges caught wind of it and decided to come. We had at least three people in attendance with ties to either gallery/arts spaces or arts/book events there, you know, for networking.^[3] A lot of people seemed to meet a lot of people. I’d had an unusual kind of day^[4] and was aggressively squirrel brained, but even still (or perhaps because of this) I’m pretty sure I shook everyone’s hand in the room and collected emails and future readers. The bar was happy with us, too, and have invited us back again for January. By pretty much all (nonexistent) metrics, it was a wild success. I’m still buzzing.

The growth is good, I think, but not because it’s "growth" but because people want to be there and seem to be getting something from it. I don’t know how many times I told the "origin story," i.e., explained that it was a bar night that turned into a bi-monthly reading which is now aspirationally monthly.

But it’s been slow to build. Intentionally.

I’m thinking about this today while I scribble these notes (let’s say) on my lunch break at work, where the imperative — for good or no — is more or less always to grow, more or less as fast as we can.^[5] And I’m thinking about this in terms of reach and purpose and everything else, about how there’s no point in trying to grow a community if there aren’t community ties, how there’s no point in adding people if the people don’t actually get to know each other, if the people being added don’t meet folks or have the kind of experience that makes them go, "Well fuck, I guess all these people are writing or working on novels or whatever, maybe I ought to do some of that, too."^[6]

And part of it is functional and/or selfish, sure: I can only do so much, and scale requires resources of time if not many other things, and I have only so much time. So scaling slowly means I have the time to build the infrastructure I need for it to stay fun and not a pain in the ass, like what more or less happened with Response. And as was pointed out by one of the writers I was talking to earlier today who had generously offered help, "delegation takes brain batteries," and there’s no point in delegating if I don’t have the energy to. So slow is good. I think of what a Navy vet I worked with about a decade ago used to say: "Slow is smooth and smooth is fast." I think about this phrase often — like, a lot.

So we grow slow. But we do grow. And I love that it’s not linear, or even always growing larger. And I love that folks took time out of their busy lives to come and read and/or listen and have a good time, and I love that my hunch that many would stay for karaoke afterwards panned out, and I love that when I say "we" about it I really do mean a "we," that though the organization of it is still more or less a one-person operation, there is a "we": there are regulars. People to point to. People who help.

It’s a beautiful thing. And I’m already looking forward to the next one on December 3.