Angela Slatter

Networking Tips for Reclusive, Introverted Writer-Types

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Three Empty Pint Glasses
Also a perfectly valid part of networking…

Thou shalt network, people used to tell me. Connections are how you get ahead in any business. 

And me, I’d ignore them. Hell, I was all fuck that shit. Networking brought to mind visions of trading business cards and ruthlessly finding people to help you getting ahead that seemed…well, exceedingly eighties. Right up there with giant shoulder-pads and Duran-Duran. I didn’t see a place for it in the arts, and it sure as hell as wasn’t playing to my strengths as an introverted chap who dislikes meeting new people.

Then I met my friend Angela Slatter, who is one of those networking dynamos who quietly sets about connecting the world together. She hooked me up with my first publisher, Twelfth Planet Press, after I told her about the weird-ass unicorn novella I’d written that I figured no-one would ever publish. She introduced me to a bunch of other writers, passed on opportunities I otherwise wouldn’t have heard about, and generally taught me the value of being a well-networked writer.

“But what you do isn’t really networking,” I said once, fairly early on in our friendship. “You’re just doing favours for people you know.”

“Exactly,” Angela said. “What in hell do you think networking is?”

And lo, I was schooled, and the scales fell from my eyes.

So, yeah, I learned my lesson on that front, and while I’m still an introverted, reclusive chap who will never be known for his ability to work a room, I’ve also become a lot better at building up networking and using its powers for good. I am, officially, a convert – there are certain things in writing you just don’t hear about or learn without a solid network of peers around you.

So lets talk networking. Specifically, how to network if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t enjoy leaving the safety of your house.

GET OVER THE TERMINOLOGY HUMP

The biggest point of resistance when I talk to other writers about networking is almost always a problem of terminology. We’ve trained ourselves to think of networking as something inherently artificial and false, like the only reason we’re going out and connecting with people is so we can take advantage of them. This is a particularly hideous thought when you’re one of natures introverts, prizing deeper connections with a handful of people over shallow connections with hundreds.

The truth is that you network is really more organic and natural than that. It’s not about names and numbers you can use and abuse, it’s about building mutual beneficial relationships with people you like and respect. It’s meeting up with friends and getting to know the friends of friends. Or it’s getting to know the peeps in your field a little better, one or two at a time, and seeing how you can help one another out.

Truth is, the terminology doesn’t matter and if you let yourself get caught up in the feeling that it’s all about you, then you’re basically doomed to fail. ‘Cause here’s the real core of building a network: it’s not about you and what you get.

It’s about what you can do for others. It’s about doing favours.

NETWORKING IS ALL ABOUT HELPING OUT YOUR PEEPS

You’re not engaging in a cynical exercise, you’re looking out for your friends. When you go to a conference or a festival, you’re not getting to know people so you can cynically ask them for favors; you’re familiarizing yourself with their careers and goals so you can pass on useful information and introduce them to people that may be able to help.

And it isn’t just big things, like hooking a peep up with a publisher (although, make no mistake, that’s pretty awesome). These days, a lot of my networking activities come in the form of giving a colleague a heads up; I’ll get emailed details about an upcoming prize about environmental writing that seems a perfect fit for a YA writer who took a course I ran a few weeks back, so I drop them an email; I see a blog post that I think one of my friends would find interesting, so I tweet them a link and suggest they check it out; someone mentions being nervous about networking at an upcoming event, so I send ’em an email that’s a somewhat truncated version of this post.

Forget about doing what’s best for you; help out your peeps without any desire or expectation of them returning the favour. Don’t make the mistake of thinking big – a thoughtful hey, I read this thing, and it seemed pertinent to what you do; are you interested is all it takes.

ALL HAIL TWITTER

Social media means that we’re often connected to more people than we expect, and it’s easy to forget that they’re part of your network. I’ve got plenty of friendships that have largely developed through the exchange of tweets, and many people I’ve met in passing at conventions that I’d probably forget if it weren’t for their names scrolling past on my twitter feed.

Pay attention to your social media, particularly if you’re the reclusive type. The occasional reply or re-tweet of those people you’d like to get to know better or keep on your radar goes a long way.

FIND YOUR COHORT

Here’s one of the weird things I’ve noticed about writing – people tend to come to prominence in cohorts and small groups. They’re the folks who all started going to conventions at the same time, started publishing novels at the same time, and generally face similar kinds of writing problems at around the same point.

When it comes to networking, it’s generally easier to start by networking with the folks who are at about the same point in their career as you. For one thing, you’re more likely to be able to do them favours; for another, you’ll all develop networks naturally as your career progresses, and you can help one-another out with new introductions as things go on.

While it’s a truism that the friends you have at the beginning of your writing career are rarely the same friends you have at the end, the cohort of writers developing at the same time as you are a valuable resource.

PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS

If you’re a quiet, shy introvert who hates crowds, don’t force yourself to work the room at a convention or writing event. Play to your strengths as a networker – find someone you can actually have a conversation with and have a damn conversation. Pick the other person who’s lurking at the back of the room, looking uncomfortable. Or find a newcomer at the convention and offer to introduce them to a few people.

There’s no prize when it comes to networking. Handing a business card out to fifty people doesn’t mean that you’ve done a good job, particularly if the connections you’ve made are so shallow that all fifty of those people toss your card in the bin before the event is over. One or two close connections can be far more important, if the people you talk to are likely to remember you in the aftermath and you’re in a position to help them out somehow.

PUSH YOURSELF A LITTLE, THEN GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK

If you truly dread meeting new people (and man, I’m with you there), then don’t put pressure on yourself to spend an entire event or conference weekend doing something you hate. For one thing, it’s going to affect your enjoyment and that won’t make you fun to be around. For another thing, if you’re a true introvert, that’ll burn you out like no-ones business.

Aim to meet one new person or spend time developing your connection with a handful of passing acquaintances – something that pushes you out of your comfort zone – then give yourself a break and hang with the peeps you’re comfortable around instead of beating yourself up and pushing to do more.

TIPS FOR BEING THE KIND OF PERSON WHO CAN WORK THE ROOM FROM TIME TO TIME

Even if you do all the things I talked about above, there are still going to be those moments where you find yourself at an event where working the room is kinda the point. There are all sorts of semi-formalised “networking” events in the arts – program launches, opening night parties, pretty much anything where the vibe is stand-around-and-eat-canapés while dressing a little better than you usually do.

And occasionally, despite your best efforts, you’ll find yourself getting a job in the arts where networking is an expected job skill. Or, at least, I did.

In that case, here are the quick survival tips for getting through networking events:

INTRODUCE PEOPLE: The easiest survival tactic at an event where networking is expected is to play to the events strength – spend the evening introducing people who may not know each other. Obviously this is a tactic that relies heavily on having a network of folks you know there already, but you can fake your way through the evening with the people you’re meeting for the first tie.

LOOK FOR PAIRS: This advice came from this site and it’s proven to be a lifesaver; look for the people who are hanging out in pairs and introduce yourself to them. Usually this will be two people who know each other, both of whom are feeling a little guilty for hanging out together instead of networking like the event encourages you to do. They’ll be greatful you’ve given them an “out,” so to speak, and there’s a good chance you’ll be left with one of the two.

ASK QUESTIONS (AND PREP SOME STANDARD QUESTIONS IN ADVANCE): Just like all the dating advice says – the best way to get someone to like you is to start asking them questions. Well, asking questions and being genuinely interested in the answers, but the questions are the important part. When you know the event beforehand, and you’re pretty sure of the kinds of people who will be there, you can usually prep this in advance (At GenreCon, for example, “what’s your genre?”  is a perfectly valid icebreaker; at writing events, asking about people’s books or what they’re working on serves the same purpose)

CLOSE WELL: I’ll admit that I struggle badly with this one, but try to avoid the standard “nice to have met you” close to a conversation with those you’ve just met. Even if it has been nice to meet them, it smacks of being polite and generally not all that interested in the person you’ve been talking too. Try to start closing with style – a handshake and a genuine thanks for giving you some of their time, or a “cheers, you’ve been brilliant company” will make you stand out from all the other peeps they’ve met in the last hour or so.

FINALLY, PENCIL IN YOUR RECOVERY TIME

When I went to World Fantasy in England last year, I was travelling with my sister immediately afterwards. She asked me what I wanted to do the day after the convention.

“Nothing,” I said. “I’ll need to sleep.”

She didn’t really believe me at the time, but when the con ended and we were safely ensconced in a London hotel room, I preceded to sleep for about eighteen hours straight, thoroughly dead to the world. You could have tasered me and I wouldn’t notice.

Partially this was the result of a couple of late nights, but a lot more came down to the simple fact that conferences drain my energy reserve. They’re fun, and I enjoy them immensely, but I need the recovery time afterwards.

If you’re truly an introvert – as in, someone who recharges their batteries with time alone instead of feeding on other people – be realistic about what face-to-face networking will take out of you and plan accordingly. Its easy to start resenting the process if you find yourself going to work the next day, without adequate recharge time, so pencil some time to recover and do something for yourself.

Speaking of Angela Slatter, she’s just launched a competition on her blog where you can win a copy of Home and Hearth, her latest novella from Spectral Press. Free Slatter fiction is always a good thing, so I recommend heading over there and putting your entry in.

The First Rule of Write Club is Talk About Write Club; The Second Rule is Talk About The Things You Learned At Write Club

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Five years ago, more or less, I was having coffee with my friend Angela Slatter and listening to her complain about the slow progress she was making on her latest draft. Shoot, I said, there’s an easy fix for that. At Clarion Kelly Link mentioned she and Holly Black get together in a coffee shop once a week, then yell at each other write until they run out of words. We could just do something similar and it’d get your work kick-started right quick.

And since Angela allowed that this idea may have merit, we started meeting up once a week to talk about writing, eat ridiculous amounts of junk food, and write up a storm. Thus began Write Club, possibly the smartest idea I ever ripped off from another, far more successful writer and applied to my own life.

Write Club’s evolved a bit over the years. We eat less junk-food these days. We meet up during the daylight hours, instead of the Friday evenings we once favoured. There was a short hiatus in 2011, when we both foolishly worked a full-time schedule for a couple of months. Angela now writes full-time, after starting out as a part-time writer/part-time QWC employee; I now write part-time while working for QWC, after starting out as an unemployed slacker who basically failed to get jobs and wrote things to pay the phone bills.

But the core remains: once a week we meet, drink coffee, talk about writing, then bang out a terrifying number of words on our latest project. After five years, it’s responsible for getting quite a bit of stuff done.

It’s fucking awesome.

Both Angela and I used to blog about Write Club pretty regularly back in 2009. It was shiny and new back then, and people kept asking about it when we tweeted results or posted things on Facebook. These days, well, the idea is a little tarnished and the vast majority of our friends know what we’re talking about, so it doesn’t get the blog time it once did.

Today I plan on rectifying that with a list of seven things I’ve learned because of Write Club.

ONE: WEEKLY WRITING EVENTS ARE A USEFUL “RESET”

I’m doing pretty good with the writing routine these days. I get up at the crack of dawn. I hammer out a couple of thousand words. I punch above my weight. I try not to fall asleep on the train ride into work. I am a fucking writing machine with laser-like focus that’s creeping up on a 2k/day average.

But I still have weeks where things go to shit. There’s problems at work. Or the rail company does track work just outside my window and keeps me awake all night. Or there’s a deadline which requires rewrites. Or my body, which isn’t built for this six-AM-in-the-morning bullshit, just says fuck it and demands a few extra hours of sleep for a few days. And so I let things slide for a day or two…possibly even four or five.

Then Write Club comes around and gets me back on track. The moment where I get a breathing space to remember what it is I do and why I love to do it, then re-align the mental crosshairs on the long-term goal. It makes it easier to slip back into the writing routine when I’ve fallen out of the habit, and it comes around often enough to make sure I don’t slide too far.

Technically it doesn’t have to be a Write Club kind of thing; over the last couple of months, my crit group has become a kind of secondary check-in that serves the same purpose, and I know plenty of writers who are doing something similar with the weekly Writing Races we run through work.

What matters is having that weekly anchor that you aren’t inclined to skip that allows you to hit the reset button.

TWO: YOUR PROCESS PROBABLY HAS MORE WASTED TIME IN IT THAN YOU THINK

Here’s the thing about write club: the four hours I spend at Angela’s place are usually the most productive point in my week. If I’m having the kind of week where I’m routinely hitting 2,000 words over a four-hour block at home, I’ll head to Write Club and achieve 3,000 or 4,000 words in the same span of time. There’s something about the process that puts my writing into high gear and encourages a little extra production.

What’s changed? A lot of little things, bits and pieces that are ingrained parts of my writing habit at home, but aren’t applicable at Write Club. At home, for example, I’ll get stuck on a bit of writing and pace the room a little, or make myself a cup of coffee. Or I’ll spend a minute or two fact-checking something on the internet after writing a scene, rather than plunging onto the next thing. Or I’ll just sit there, blinking at the grey light of pre-dawn happening outside my window.

The details probably shift from day-to-day, but what remains is this: there are all sorts of little moments where I waste time when I’m on my own. That goes away when there’s another person there, furiously working on their own project, encouraging me to cut short my little pause and get back into the manuscript.

THREE: “NETWORK” IS NOT A DIRTY WORD

I’ve learned a lot from Angela over five years of write club. The most useful thing, however, has been watching the way Angela networks as a writer, and occasionally benefiting from said network when she’s leveraged it on my behalf.

I used to hate the very idea of networking. It brought to mind images of business cards and false smiles, the relentlessly cynical exercise of meetings with people I didn’t really like or know how to talk too. It was a thing for extraverts, the people who actually liked going out there and talking to people. I wrote because I hated that shit. I wanted to spend as little time out in the world as possible.

And while I had several friends who were natural super-connectors, capable of discovering something interesting about nearly everyone they met and developing a firm friendship because of it, I’d never really seen someone who approached networking from a quieter, more introverted place.

Then I spent five years watching Angela do her thing, quietly connecting people with one-another via email or quick catch-ups at conventions, doing small favours for people and helping them out, passing on news of this opportunity or that opening to people who’d be a good fit. It’s fucking awe inspiring to watch, and at no point does it come off as a dry or cynical exercise.

FOUR: TALK ABOUT THE FUTURE

It will probably come as no surprise that I have a long-term strategy for my writing.  It’s moderately detailed, in the short-term, and eminently adaptable based on changes in prospects and opportunities in the long term, but it’s there and I know the shape of the career I want to have.

While the chance to sit down and write every week is one of Write Club’s major perks, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how fucking awesome it is to sit down every seven days and discuss the state of your career and your future plans with another writer who gets it. Someone who understands that publishing is a step, not an end-point, and thinks of opportunities accordingly.

I refine a lot of my future plans at Write Clubs. I figure out which opportunities are good ones and which are bad by using Angela as a sounding board. I talk through the merits of submitting here, or the drawbacks of saying no when someone writes and asks for a particular thing. I pay attention to the choices Angela makes and figure out the whys and wherefores of each step.

Talking about the future, about where I want to go and what I want to do, helps make it more concrete. And once it’s concrete, it’s easier to work towards, especially on the cold winter mornings that make up my writing time for the rest of the week.

FIVE: MY PROCESS IS NOT YOUR PROCESS, AND IT SURE AS HELL AIN’T ANGELA’S PROCESS

No two writers work the same way. I already knew this, well before Write Club was a thing, but it’s surprisingly how well it’s been schooled into me after five years of working with someone else in the room every week.

Angela, for instance, likes to talk through her work. She plots out loud, figuring out how things interconnect, and she keeps a lot of little details moving in way I can’t even begin to comprehend. She collaborates well, as evidenced by works like Midnight and Moonshine which she wrote with LL Hannett.

Me, I can’t do that. Once I’ve started the story, I want it to rattle around inside my skull until it’s about 90% done, and only then am I able to invite other people in to read what I’ve done or discuss a plot point I haven’t been able to figure out. The thought of collaboration makes me break out in a cold sweat. I’m happy to chat about Angela’s work in progress, but I tend to lock down the details of my own unless I’m massively, monumentally stuck or about to type “The End.”

None of that really matters. What matters is that your process works and you’re finishing your damn projects. So long as that happens regularly, you’re golden.

SIX: SOMETIMES YOU JUST HAVE TO TAKE A CHANCE ON A WEIRD IDEA

Here’s something I don’t often say out loud, but: Write Club shouldn’t exist.

Sure, Angela and I knew each other well enough to hang out during that initial conversation, but this was still pretty early on in our friendship. I’m pretty damn skittish around people I’ve just met. Hell, I’m like a cantankerous house-cat, jealously guarding my territory and snarling at anyone who comes close. I don’t really invite close friends I’ve known for decades to come around and hang at my place, let alone people that I’ve only known for a couple of months and hung out with three or four times.

That I opened my mouth and ventured a suggestion that basically amounted to, well, let us hang out every week for a couple of years, yeah? is kind of bizarre and utterly unlike me. If it hadn’t been writing-related, it almost certainly wouldn’t have happened.

Somewhere in the multi-verse there is a Peter who didn’t suggest write club that fateful day back in 2009. Truly, I have to admit, it would suck to be that guy.

SEVEN: SEEK OUT LIKE-MINDED WRITERS

Write Club is mostly Angela and I. It hasn’t always been thus. In the halcyon early days, when we’d Write Club on a Friday night like the word-obsessed freaks we were, there would occasionally be spare bodies in the room. People who wanted to get in on the Write Club vibe and pound the keyboards.

Mostly, these people would show up for a couple of weeks and then quietly disappear. Not because they were weak or uninterested in writing, but because Write Club wasn’t for them. They didn’t groove of the hours of silence, focused on the clatter of keys. Or they didn’t want to set aside the chunk of their week for the sole purpose of writing.

I remember going to Kevin J. Anderson workshop a few years back, and one of the most interesting things he talked about was starting a critique group in the early days of his career where one of the conditions of entry was being able to produce three or more rejection letters from professional markets. If you couldn’t meet that requirement, he said, you weren’t taking writing seriously enough to avoid frustrating him and the other writers who were showing up.

Basically, you just weren’t in sync with the group.

Mindsets matter. There’s a social element to Write Club that’s valuable, but ultimately it’s about the work. If the choice is an extra half-hour of chatting or an extra half-hour of writing, we’re almost certainly going to take the half-hour of writing time. It comes down to the way we think about writing and the way we think about our careers.

If we weren’t the kind of people who’d make that choice, odds are this whole thing would have fallen apart years ago.

Peeps Doing Cool Stuff: February 2014 Edition

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Somewhere along the line, I got out of the habit of posting about peeps releasing cool stuff into the world. I’m not sure why, ’cause I got some pretty awesome peeps and they’re doing some very cool stuff, but my blogging habits are arbitrary these days despite my best intentions.

With that in mind, lets rectify this oversight, and allow me to recommend the following:

RAF_VOL9_ISS_3Review of Australian Fiction, Volume Nine, Issue Three

The concept behind the RAF is actually pretty cool – they grab an established writer, get them to pick an up-and-comer to work with, then produce an issue that features (generally) novella or novelette length work that would be hard to sell elsewhere.

This issue features the always impeccable prose of Angela Slatter as the established author, paired with emerging Brisbane fantasist Linda Brucesmith.

The upside of Angela publishing here is that I now know that RAF has finally abandoned the god-awful Book.ish ebook platform it used in its early days, so it’s actually become something I’ll subscribe to instead of purchasing as a one-off.

everything-is-a-graveyardEverything is a Graveyard, Jason Fischer

This is old news for the Australian SF fans who follow this blog, but for the gamer types who follow the blog and really liked Jason’s zombie novellas (and there are a few), I’m going to mention it: Everything is a Graveyard is Jason’s first short-story collection, brought out via Ticonderoga Publishing.

I haven’t picked up a copy yet, but I know Jason’s short fiction well enough to appreciate his off-beat blend of Australian themes, craziness, and off-beat world-building. Also, I’m off to Adelaide tomorrow, so I’m largely planning on picking up a copy while I’m in Jason’s home town, whereupon I shall track him down and force him to sign copies.

And badger him about the number of awful puns…

ASunsetFinish_200A Sunset Finish, Melinda Moore

I can argue that I’m fashionably late mentioning Jason’s collection, but there’s no excuses here: Melinda emailed me about her first novella getting released back in June of last year, and I’ve been meaning to offer public congratulations for…wow, eight months now.

I first got to know Melinda when we frequented the same gaming forum, way back in 2003 or so, and she frequently blew me away with short-stories she wrote for one of the semi-regular writing jams that happened there. Since then she’s been rocking it with a bunch of short story publications, and I’ve just loaded a copy of A Sunset Finish onto my kindle to read while I’m travelling over the next week.

WebThe Memory of Death: Death Works 4, Trent Jamieson

Trent Jamieson has just released the forth installment of his Death Works series, which is a very good thing. Mostly ’cause I like Trent, and it would be unfortunately if I had to kill him for leaving the series at the end of the third book, which was one of the most HOLY-SHIT-YOU-DID-NOT-JUST-FUCKING-DO-THAT-YOU-BASTARD-FUCK-FUCK-FUCK cliffhangers I’ve ever seen.

I would have killed him, too. I’m not a guy who takes things well when good narratives are left half-finished, and there was a very definite sense that Steven de Selby’s journey wasn’t done yet. Out now via Momentum Books, who are doing gorgeous stuff in the digital realm these days (I mean, hell, I love the cover of this book; I have mad cover envy), and worth picking up.