*originally published at www.writer2writer.com

Don’t Schmooze? You Lose: The 5 P’s Of Networking for Authors

Copyright Beth Morrow
- All Rights Reserved

One element of writing that strikes fear in the heart of the author is speaking up in the name of self-promotion. Not all writers are introverts, of course, but many writers are uncomfortable when the time comes to meet new people, break out of their comfort zone and approaching someone who can potentially help our career.

There’s both good and bad news about expanding your circle of literary colleagues. Bad news: You must speak up to become successful. Good news: Networking is easier than you think.

How easy? Check out this list and see for yourself:

1.      Successful networking is personal

Networking is based on the premise of breaking large groups of people into individuals who can benefit the author’s career in some capacity. Think beyond the typical editor and agent here: published authors who can share invaluable advice, professionals who have research knowledge crucial to your plot, other writers looking for critique partners, email loops or goal-setting groups. Building personal relationships in the writing and publishing world is the same as establishing meaningful partnerships in the “regular” world. Others want to get to know you for yourself and your business, just as you want to connect with them, so be respectful and honest from the start. Don’t pry if your new contact is shy; rather, pick a common area of interest (to eliminate pressure) and see where the conversation goes.

2.       Successful networkers areprofessional

If you aren’t published (yet), and even if you are, remember that the impression you leave with your new acquaintance will linger long after your initial discussion has ended. Make your best effort to maintain professionalism at all times, even if the conversation does not go in a direction you would like. Rub an editor the wrong way on the first chance and it’s likely they’ll never forget you in the future—and not for the right reasons.

3. Successful networking is about potential

As I mentioned above, networking is about meeting and connecting with a variety of people from all walks of life who have one thing in common: enriching your life in some way. Limiting yourself to the belief that you only want to go to conferences with a certain agent or workshops with one author is a good way to start gaining confidence to attend writing gatherings, but you never know how the others you meet along the way might help. Maybe not now, but writers are one of the most open, caring groups of people who genuinely enjoy helping others. You never know where the next good idea or helpful tidbit will come from. Why not surround yourself with interesting people to help foster your own growth?

4.       Successful networkers are positive

No one likes a complainer, whiner or wimp. Period. It irks others to no end to meet writers, published or unpublished, who gives more reasons to not buy their work (or to not consider them a ‘real’ writer) than enjoying the interaction of a new relationship. If the first thing you do is make an excuse for your writing (“I only write short stories because I don’t have good ideas for longer ones”), complain about the lack of editor/agent interest in your work (you never know who may be a friend or client of those you’re berating), or whine that you never have enough time/energy/creativity to actually sit down and writer (who does?!), it’s guaranteed you’ll turn the other person off—almost immediately. We all have our own personal writing issues, and there is always a time and place to discuss them, but that time is not at the initial stage of a networking opportunity. Save your gripes for later and put on your best smile. If you don’t find confidence in yourself, how can anyone else?

5. Successful networking relies on preparation

Networking is also about promotion. If you’re published, you know this all to well and nothing needs repeating. If you’re not yet published (or newly published), use this time to bolster your image by establishing yourself as a credible, potential author. Business cards are an easy way to do this. Not only does it make collecting information simple, it will jog the memory of your conversation at a later date. Many authors are nervous about tooting their own horn, so practice what you’ll say before you meet others. Compliments are a great way to start a conversation. Volunteering at a conference or writing event often opens channels of communication because talking is a part of the job. Think ahead about topics of conversation you can introduce if you meet someone fascinating but get tongue-tied. Be one step ahead of where you’re starting to get the most from every networking opportunity.

Authors learn early in the publishing game that there’s far more to writing books than just, well, writing. Networking may be intimidating, but it does get easier the more you do it. Take full advantage of every chance you get to network to add friends, increase colleagues and invite readers to your work. Make it your mission to expand your network and your career will reap the benefits.

About the author: Beth Morrow is a freelance author whose writing colleagues (and family) find it hard to believe that she used to be a shy writer. She’s awaiting the publication of her first nonfiction book while jumping back into fiction writing with both feet.

Flour, Sugar and Lots of Passion: Learn To Love the Writing Process
By Beth Morrow

Central Ohio Fiction Writers’Write from the Heart
July 2004Vol. XVI, Issue 7 RWA Chapter 48

One of the few pleasures my mother indulged in when I was young was to take a cake decorating class at the local vocational school. She was a quick and creative student, and it wasn’t long before her circle of friends and family began asking her to make cakes for a variety of occasions: birthdays, anniversaries, children’s parties, retirements. Her passion translated to bringing in extra money for her growing family thanks to her beautiful, edible compositions.

That short course introduced her to a passion that has lasted most of her life. Through hours of practice and patience, mounds of flour, and pounds of shortening, she perfected her craft to the point of being able to create exquisite roses and elaborate stars of sugar with a flick of her wrist. Never once, while my sister and I licked icing from our fingertips as we sat at the counter with her did she complain that her roses weren’t as elegant as the local bakery’s or that her cake batter was too thin for her to work with. She never stopped her mixer because of ‘baker’s block.’ She found joy in immersing herself in the process, not wasting her energy worrying about the product, and that pleasure made her final creations all the more delicious.

After many years, arthritis made cake decorating far more painful than pleasurable, and mom limited her cakes to family birthdays. Once, while looking through old scrapbooks, a photo of a birthday cake she’d made for my brother brought to mind how much joy her cakes had given those around her. I asked if she would teach me her craft so I could do the same.

She agreed but warned me that succeeding would take equal amounts of failure and patience—and that I needed to learn to enjoy making the cakes as much as decorating them. I failed to take her warning seriously and dove in to my new hobby. Though I followed her directions exactly, the quality of my cakes never quite matched hers. Where the texture of her cakes had been light and delicate, mine were uneven and tough. The pink in my roses was too bright, my icing leaves more squashed than elegant. I continued to work toward cake nirvana, but as life crept in with more demands on my time, I chose to leave cake decorating in favor of new pursuits. I wanted the quick, easy guarantee of fortune and fame—without the dirty wooden spoons and food color stained fingers.

Not long ago I had a conversation with someone enamored with the writing life. Like countless others, her notions of writing were lofty and misguided, believing that publication must certainly bring with it the trappings of wealth and infinite happiness. She believed good writing magically appears at will for writers. Her driving desire, I discovered, was to be a published children’s author. I inquired as to how many stories she’s written and for how long she’d been writing. None and never, she informed me, but she did assure me of how easy it would be once she found the right publisher. I laughed.

Goals in themselves are wonderful things. Common sense tells us that having a goal and taking legitimate, active steps toward fulfilling it will bring us much more success than simply wishing for it to appear. But to put the book or publication contract before the writing, or the cake before the recipe guarantees success in only one thing: failure. To write with the sole purpose of publication does not make you a writer. A hobbyist? Perhaps. A dreamer, certainly. Ask any writer—one you admire, published or not—and you’ll discover that while they may derive pleasure from holding that book with their name on the cover or framing that page with their byline at the bottom, what fuels their ambition has more to do with the path they’ve chosen in life than the final destination. If you don’t love words, don’t love slaving over sentences and immersing yourself in the craft every spare moment you have, chances are your passion for writing will wane—and that will come to pass in your writing. Write for the pleasure, the sheer happiness of seeing words dance across your screen or beneath your pen. Write to fill your soul with the song that a well-constructed paragraph plays. Do so and your writing will begin to sparkle with your inner passion. Don’t become so consumed with the product that you forget how much you love the process. The happiness you feel in writing— and in your life—will then be but icing on the cake.

(Beth Morrow has been writing since the fifth grade. Her paranormal placed 2nd in the 2004 OVRWA Enchanted Words contest and her first nationally-published non-fiction educational article is slated to come out in the next few months. She is a member of RWA, COFW and OVRWA and bakes everything but cakes from scratch.)

*Would you like to use this article in your writing newsletter or on your site? Email me for reprint info.

Flour, Sugar and Lots of Passion: Learning to Love the Writing Process
Originally published in Central Ohio Fiction Writers’ Write From the Heart, July 2004

Educating Super Learners: Monthly Newsletter of the ESL Department of Columbus Public Schools, Columbus, OH. March 2005 Vol. 1 Issue 6

Although the all-you-can-test frenzy of March is relatively new, the doldrums created by this late winter/early spring season is not. Lousy weather, new mandates, antsy students, negative publicity, public education criticism…is it any wonder that 50% of all new teachers leave the profession within five years? (NCATE, 2003).

Unfortunately, difficult situations and time constraints aren’t disappearing anytime soon. But the keys to alleviating–and in some cases–avoiding–stress in the future lies in the ability to make minimal but consistent changes in your daily routine. Chances are that you’re feeling overwhelmed at this minute. There are a variety of methods to regaining your foothold on sanity–the trick is to discover which ones work best and feel most comfortable for you. Some suggestions include:

Take a walk.
Sounds too easy and too good to be true, right? But give walking a try and you may find that with fresh air often comes a fresh perspective. Walking releases endorphins, the body’s natural stress-relieving hormones, which have been proven to increase energy, focus and positive mental processes. In the long run, research shows walking lowers the risk of heart disease and other health-related issues. Best of all, it’s free!

Get Up 15 Minutes Earlier
Or, if you’re a night owl, stay up 15 minutes later. Use this time to plan tomorrow’s activities, read a book, have a cup of tea, meditate, treat yourself to a piece of chocolate and just enjoy the peace that comes with a quiet household. Do NOT use this time to clean house, pay bills, grade assignments or anything which already causes stress during the regular day. You’ll have plenty of time for that once the day kicks into gear.

Seek Out Positive People
Often this is easier said than done. We all have colleagues, family, friends and parents who drag us down, regardless of the issue. You know who they are–they leave you feeling empty, alone, bitter, angry and defeated the instant you see them. Managing stress requires that you limit or eliminate the sources of negative energy around you and focus on the positive. It can be difficult if you discover a longtime friend or teacher next door drags you down, but by limiting your interaction with that person you’ll open up opportunities for interacting with people who inspire, excite and share your enthusiasm for teaching and life.

Just Say No
As teachers, we’re innately programmed to volunteer when others do not. Our guiding mantra–do it for the kids–at times puts more on our plate than we can realistically handle. But being overwhelmed and overscheduled can be detrimental to both you and your students. Make a list of the two or three programs or volunteer opportunities you truly enjoy or believe your students benefit most from and limit your participation to those. Resist the urge to raise your hand when something pops up at staff meetings, even if others claim dire consequences if you don’t help. Be flattered, be pleased your involvement was noticed, then say you’d like someone else to enjoy organizing or participating. If you feel pressured, ask for time to think about it (knowing you’ll just turn them down in private the next day!).

Create Your Own Oasis
The key to making this a successful stress reliever is choose something you love and allow nothing to intrude on that time you’ve created. Maybe Wednesday evenings you can plan dinner at your favorite restaurant. Or go to the newest movie every Saturday afternoon. Money isn’t necessary, however. Lock the bathroom door on Friday nights and treat yourself to a hot bubble bath. Do thirty minutes of yoga every day after school. Lose yourself in your favorite mindless television show. Plan in advance and honor that time no matter what threatens to intrude. After all, if you don’t treat yourself as if you’re worth the time, you can’t expect others to, either.

Relieving stress and coping with the pressures of teaching requires reflection on how to increase the pleasure of your life with the time you have available. Spend some of that fleeting time determining what makes you happiest and at peace then work toward implementing more of those activities into your daily routine. With practice, your improved attitude and energy might just become contagious enough for others to catch.

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To Be Or Not To Be: The Right To Be a Writer
By Beth Morrow

Central Ohio Fiction Writers’Write from the Heart
September 2004 Vol. XVI, Issue 9 RWA Chapter 48

Last weekend, my son Jason had his friend Evan over to spend the night with us. As I made dinner and they set up for their PlayStation festival in the adjoining family room, I caught snippets of their conversation.

“What do your parents do?” Evan asked Jason.

Jason shrugged as he untangled the power cables with his twelve-year old indifference. “My dad teaches chemistry at the high school.”

I held my breath, wondering why he hadn’t just admitted to Evan that both his parents were teachers, therefore earning from Evan the typical sympathetic response of ‘oh, man, that sucks.’ But instead of further lamenting his fate in life when Evan prompted him about my occupation, Jason flicked on the television and replied, “My mom’s a writer.”

“Cool,” Evan replied before grabbing a controller. Jason popped in a game and they immersed themselves in a college football video game while I stood temporarily speechless, knife stalled mid-chop over a cutting board brimming with salad vegetables.

My breathlessness wasn’t from Jason’s conveniently omitting that the reason he had a PlayStation was because I happened to be an ESL teacher. It wasn’t irritation from his part-truth, or surprise that my name and ‘cool’ were in the same sentence that made me pause over the green peppers–it was the experience, for the first time, of someone other than my writing group friends considering me a writer.

I must admit Jason’s comment went straight to my head. Not that it changed the routine of my writing life—I still awoke at 4:30 the next morning for an intimate session with the characters in my work-in-progress, a few ideas for an article, a little editing on a short story I finished a month ago—but I can’t deny that it didn’t give me a little smile, put a little extra sparkle in my fingers on those keys that next morning.

Writer? Me? How can I be considered a writer if the only things I’ve published is newsletters for my gardening group? How can I be considered a writer when six unpublished novels sit in boxes upstairs in my writing room, a glorified spare bedroom-refuge where I have spent days sifting through story ideas like prospectors sifted through sand for flakes of gold? How can I be considered a writer when my short stories have yet to see the light of day from a glossy page and not my recycled printer paper? How can I be considered a writer without having signed my name to a contract or on a book cover at a bookstore signing? How can I be considered a writer?

Shouldn’t the question instead be, ‘How could I not consider myself a writer?’

After the glow of being coined a writer had dulled by the weather of a few days’ time, I thought back to Jason’s comment. Since I didn’t proclaim myself as a writer every night at the dinner table, he must have picked up the idea elsewhere. And if it were obvious enough for him to mention it to Evan, why hadn’t it been obvious to me?

Some writers have difficulty defining themselves as writers because, to them, what distinguishes the writer from the ordinary human is to have something that necessitates a contract, agent or editor. The supreme danger of this belief is that to deny the writer his identity because he hasn’t yet published is to deny the writer the very existence of his soul. Albert Einstein created formulas for years before he hit on something with the ubiquitous ‘E=mc2’. Before his discovery, do you think he refrained from calling himself a scientist because he hadn’t found a publicly-accepted, undisputable, universal representation that defined energy and mass as different forms of the same thing and that each could be converted to the other? Or, rather, did he don his lab coat daily and study elaborate equations like every other scientist, just one who had yet to make that career-defining discovery? What of Thomas Edison’s numerous failed attempts (rumored in the hundreds) to improve a working model of an invention that would bring the light of day inside homes after sunset? For all of Edison’s successes, there were just as many failures. Imagine Edison at a dinner party being asked by a stranger about his line of work. Should he have dropped his chin, lowered his gaze and mumbled ‘inventor’ in reply?

The writer’s shame should not come from being unpublished; the shame should lie in the inability to admit to others what most matters to the heart and soul of the writer as an individual: the joy of the written word.

Think, too, of the archeologist still hoping to unearth the missing link of human civilization, the researcher who hasn’t yet discovered the cure for diabetes or the professional baseball player whose team has yet to make the World Series. Do these people—or the millions of others on Earth—limit themselves to describing their passions for their line of work in terms of what they’ve accomplished on a grand, elaborate scale? Or do they allow the genuine passion and happiness of their chosen field to shine through? Do they shy away from questions about their work and try to justify their choices with unnecessary babble or do they answer with gusto and excitement?

Writers aren’t writers because they’re published. Writers are writers because they write. Frighteningly simple and elegantly truthful. Of all occupations, writing is one of the most timeless and noble. Being able to take the abstract and form it into the concrete, into something capable of bringing a reader to laughter or tears, to fill the reader with hope or hopelessness, to bring about understanding or revelation through the written word is a talent many wish they had but few possess.

Dare yourself to be a writer. Don’t hide your gift behind mumbles and fumbling stammers—use the power of language to communicate your own wishes, hopes and passions. You were, after all, given the gift of words for a reason. You have every right to be a writer.

(Beth Morrow is a writer who gets ideas by listening to other people’s conversations. Though she loves writing romantic fiction, her latest nonfiction article can be found in the Sept/Oct. ’04 issue of TWINS magazine.)

*Would you like to use this article in your writing newsletter or on your site? Email me for reprint info.

To Be or Not To Be: The Right to Be A Writer
Originally published in Central Ohio Fiction Writers’ Write From the Heart, September 2004

*Would you like to use this article in your education newsletter or on your site?
Email me for reprint info.