Monday at BayCon 2013

I have lots of writer friends who cling to the old-fashioned notion of the lonely author toiling away in solitude, until emerging with their masterpiece ready to be snapped up by publishers. They know it’s not real. It’s never been real, but the myth has a certain romance to it. As a great bonus, it puts off into the far future that moment when you discover if your work has meaning to anyone other than yourself.

The one compromise they’ll take is to join a critique circle … more on those in a post I’m still working on. That way, you still have the comfort of an insular environment, listening to just a few voices who don’t actually have power over your publication chances. It feels safe, even when the feedback isn’t always “wow, that’s fantastic!”

Yet, as I’ve learned the hard way, and as publishing pros will tell you if you but listen, the journey to publishing that precious work (and all that follows) begins while you’re still writing. If you’re thinking of making even a part-time extra-gig career of being a writer, you need to approach it as a pro, and seek out the society of others in that endeavor. Sanity check? As an engineer in the power industry, I’m a senior member of the IEEE, our professional organization. It keeps me connected to advances in my field. Don’t you want that for your writing career?

Here are the key groups I’ve joined to network with other writers, learn new skills, and build a better platform for this career: the California Writers Club (and I assure you that wherever you are, there is a similar organization), the Women’s National Book Association, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

The California Writers Club is a grand old organization, claiming Jack London as an early connection. The South Bay Writers branch is a friendly supportive group for writers at all levels and in all genres, including poetry. Quite a few poets, actually, who connect each other with poetry-focused events in the area.  The group hosts regular sociable (in person) meetings with a speaker and gets together for summer and winter celebrations. If you’ve followed me before, you’ll know we also sponsor twice-monthly online open mics, informal (not competitive) which also attract writers who can’t make it to meetings. At our last open mic, we met two new poets in the area (who didn’t know each other before but turned out to have a connection in their non-writing careers) and then we had a fun surprise, as one of our regulars was attending from his birthday celebration and shared not only a work-in-progress appropriate to Halloween but also the ceremonial candle-blowing-out portion of the party. Alas, he could not figure out how to send us slices on Zoom.

If you haven’t been a part of a professional organization before, keep in mind that in this context “social” has two elements: making friends (don’t we all need friends?) and networking (making friends who mutually help out each other careerwise). I’ve gained in both senses from being a part of this group, including making contacts beyond the group, as friends introduce me to other friends in the broader writing community. As is usual for CWC, all meetings are open to nonmembers, and usually attendance is free for a newbie, so anyone can visit and form their own impressions.

There are several CWC branches in my area, and they all welcome members of other branches, which is great for catching speakers you want to hear or just getting some variety in your mix of connections. Like others I kow, I’ve joined a second branch, the one based on the San Francisco Peninsula. It’s not convenient for me to attend most meetings, because they’re held an hour’s drive away, but that particular branch happens to have a higher concentration of sci-fi/fantasy writers, some of whom I’d met through online open mics. Now, I run that chapter’s online open mic and I’m leading the members-only anthology project. If I hadn’t joined this club, it might have been years (or never) before I’d had an opportunity to first assist an experienced anthology editor and then take the helm for the next edition.

Another resource I strongly recommend is the Women’s National Book Association, which has chapters all around the country and offers many online ways to interact and learn. This organization is all about supporting women and underrepresented authors as they work to professional goals; and no, you don’t need to be a woman to join or to attend events. The San Francisco chapter has a great cast of characters, including poets, nonfiction writers, novelists, short-story authors, agents, and local small publishers. Some members are involved with the annual San Francisco Writers Conference. Both the local and national organizations offer online programs as well as some in person events. During covid, this is one organization that took to heart the lessons we all learned about how effective the online environment can be to bring together those who can’t access distant in-person events.  For instance, they converted their formerly hard-to-access annual pitching workshop event to an online program, and chose to keep it that way.

Finally, with some effort, I’ve managed to qualify for membership in my genre’s professional organization, SFWA. They do require a certain amount of sales, and I work with a small publisher who likes my slightly off-the-beaten-trail work, so I was lucky there. However, even before I qualified for membership, I volunteered as a tech for the annual conference (when it was online) and have learned that I’m good at contributing on that end (the engineering degree did help a bit, there), which meant I could eventually earn my way to attend the annual writing conference, which otherwise would be outside my means. That’s another trick I’d learned from engineering conferences, where volunteering got me into events I couldn’t otherwise have attended. SFWA offers a lot of support, cameraderie, and networking connections to members. Not to mention the chance to hobnob with some of my SFF heroes and meet in person writers and techies I’d only been able to meet through Discord or on a Zoom call.

This essay started as an email to a new friend, a poet working on her MFA who was looking for connections in this area and reached out through our open-mic signup form. She’s taking a strong route, creatively seeking to build bridges early in her career. You, too, can look for the connections that will help you grow as a professional. Hey, if you’re not (or not only) a writer, but an engineer or an Amazon tech or a scientist or whatever, remember to connect with organizations that bring together others in your field for mutual benefit. (Yes, of course that includes unions.) Trust me, even if you’re an introvert like me, taking that step works to draw you out of your isolation and enliven your life and empower your career.