When you first start writing you find your cohort–people figuring out their writing process at the same time as you, submitting work to the same places you are. You built your networks at the same time. You develop new work at the same time, establish reputations, see each other at events and cons. It feels like you’re building from a similar place, heading towards a similar destination.
Somewhere along the line, careers begin to advance at different paces. One of your cohort makes their first pro sale, or wins an award at a conference. Someone has their first book come out. Someone gets sick and has to slow down, or a family tragedy interferes with their writing process and they disappear for a few years. Someone looks at the daunting prospect of making a living from their writing and decides, quite reasonably, that it’s not something they want to pursue with the same fervour as others in their cohort.
All of this is natural: Our ours are not created equal; Our goals are not the same.
And yet, there’s the commonly accepted wisdom among writers who have been at it a while: the friends you start your career with are rarely the friends you have at the end. When the bond with your cohort is built around learning, striving, and sharing a common dream, things get tricky when some of your number finds themselves contending with a better class of problems.
It’s easy for the person who moves ahead to feel unsupported; for those who are earlier down the path to feel like they’ve been left behind. For both sides to reframe the feelings as the other sides fault, thinking in terms of if-onlys and why-don’t-they’s and oh-god, if-they-just…
To measure your journey against those around you–for good or for ill–as a means of judging success.
Networking matters, when your a writer. A healthy cohort of friends and colleagues is a very good thing to have–but making sure you’re a healthy part of that cohort is the first step. You can’t be there for your colleagues when you’re busy feeling jealous, or when you’re ashamed or frightened of your feelings about their success or failure.
The hardest thing in the world is sit down, look at your own goddamn mountain, and tell yourself: this is where I am right now, and this is the next step I need to take towards my goal. It’s time to set aside how I think my cohort is doing and focus on what I need to get done.
