This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah , Episode 43: How Important Is Networking For Writers?

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write every day. I’m your host, Sarah . And there’s just a lot going on today. Many of you who listen regularly know that I live on the edge of a graveyard, and today there is actually a funeral going on right now. No pun on the phrase right now intended by the way.

And it’s also raining, perhaps appropriately. I don’t know. And it’s raining so hard that the roof in my office is leaking. And so I’ve put a little towel on the floor here to absorb the sound of the water dripping onto the floor. So there’s just a lot going on, and all of these rather dismal things, hopefully won’t make it too difficult to record what I hope will be a really inspiring and uplifting episode of the Write Now podcast. So to lift the mood just a little bit, I would like to read some emails that I receive from listeners, just like you, and maybe you are the listener who sent me one of these.

The first one is from podcast listener, Shae, who says, “As always, I love your words. Thanks so much for your podcast. I truly enjoy it.” Well, Shae, thank you so much for your words. You are just lovely. Thank you so much for getting in touch with me. The next email is from Michael from the Road Noise podcast, and he says, “Thanks for your podcast. It truly does help to keep me inspired, especially as I attempt to novelize a play I wrote. I appreciate the work you do and your passion for writing.” Michael, thank you so much. I appreciate everything you said, and I wish you the best of luck as you novelize your play.

Finally, podcast listener, Jody from Australia says, “I just wanted to write to you and tell you how much I enjoy your podcast. Lately, so many of your episodes have resonated with me and where I am in my writing journey. So thank you. And I look forward to you continuing to encourage and inspire me and other writers.” Jody, thank you so much for your words. That is 100% the reason that I am doing this podcast, and I’m so glad that my story resonates with you. I think that, that’s part of the power of telling your story is that no matter how triumphant or no matter how tragic it may be, there’s always something in telling your story that can help other people, and that other people can take away from it.

And whether it’s a life lesson or a shared sentiment or a shared experience, it’s all incredibly worth it. If you would like to get in touch with me, I don’t always read emails over the air. In fact, if you send me an email, I will get your express permission to share it over the airwaves here. I do write back and forth and correspond with people who write to me, and so please do get in touch. This is another one of the reasons that I’ve enjoyed this podcast so much is, I’ve just met the greatest people, and that’s going to tie into the theme of today’s episode, but first, if you do want to get in touch with me, you can do so a couple of ways. First, you can send an email to hello@sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H W-E-R-N-E-R.com. You can also navigate to that website and navigate over to the contact page, and there is a super simple form. It gives you a space for your name, your email address, and a short or long message, whatever you like. And you can get in touch with me that way.

So I think that we’re doing something great here. I really think that we are building something. We’re working into pushing forward in our own creative works and making headway in our own creative projects and living creative lives. And even if this podcast hasn’t necessarily helped you make tangible progress on whatever project it is you have in mind, hopefully it’s at least got you thinking about starting something creative or even living in a more creative way, or maybe it’s helped you to make time in your busy schedule for a little bit of creative time. Whatever it is, I hope that you’re getting something valuable out of this show. I really do, because I believe in you, and I believe in what we’re building here together. So just thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for supporting this show. Thank you for just being an amazing creative individual.

I am honored and humbled to be able to speak to people like you. So today we’re going to be talking about networking, and gosh, I don’t know if you ever watched this or if you remember it at all, it’s from a while ago. There was a Canadian comedy troupe called Kids in the Hall and they did comedy sketches and they were just brilliance and avant-garde and ahead of their time in so many ways, but some of my favorite sketches that they did were about corporate life, because right after I graduated from college with my liberal arts degree in my dreams of truth and beauty and poetry and all of those wonderful nebulous things, I immediately worked through a series of very, very corporate jobs.

I worked for a software company in Chicago, and then I worked for a large bank. And during that time, my now husband, Tim, we were dating at the time, but he introduced me to Kids in the Hall and it was just so funny to me. They have sketches, lampooning the ridiculous self-seriousness of the business world, men in suits spouting gibberish, passive aggressive office ladies gossiping over things that don’t matter at all, and yet matter all too much. But most of all, they made fun of self-important executives and how they meet and network and really use one another in really shallow ways.

And so I went into the business world with a sort of mixture of idealism and cynicism. I was both naive and jaded by what I was doing, selling things and reading corporate contracts and networking. Watching Kids in the Hall sketches gave me a really good perspective that I needn’t lose myself in this world of handshakes and briefcases, but now more than 10 years later, I’m discovering, and you might hate me for this, but hear me out. I’m discovering that networking can be a useful and powerful tool. Are you still there? Did you shut off this episode in disgust? I really hope that you stayed and you’ll hear me out about how you can use networking to your advantage.

But I do want to address the fact that to a lot of people, especially to creatives like us, networking is such a dirty word. We imagine going into a chamber mixer or a happy hour downtown where everybody’s wearing suits and exchanging business cards and faking smiles and trying to remember the names of everyone else’s children and clapping each other on the back and quite the good old boy fashion. If you’re an introvert like me, the prospect of wandering into a networking events such as this is just downright horrifying, but this isn’t the type of networking that I’m talking about. So I want to be very clear with what I mean going forward in this episode, when I talk about networking.

I am not talking about using your corporate holiday party as an excuse to mingle and shake hands and network your way around the room. I am not talking about shaking hands with people and figuring out in the back of your mind how you can use them to your advantage. I’m not talking about meeting people just for the sake of meeting people or, a phrase which I hate, ‘growing your network’, because at the end of the day it’s not about how many faces you can recognize in a crowd. It’s not about how many people you know. It is to quote the old adage that just really, really bothered me when I first graduated from college. It’s all about who you know.

Jeff Goins is a nationally bestselling author and he wrote a blog post that really caught my attention and gave a voice to sort of my tangled feelings about networking in general. In his blog post called The Unfair Truth About How Creative People Really Succeed, which I’ll link to in the show notes for this episode, Jeff Goins talks about how a lot of the time when we say a writer got lucky and that they found success through luck, a lot of the time that ‘luck’ was formed by networking. In his article, he talks about the success of Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway, for those of you who just don’t do the one word Madonna like thing for him. I don’t know why I do that. Ernest Hemingway’s his name. He’s a very famous American writer. And he wrote classic works and redefined a style of writing that really I think changed how we all write to this day.

And so you say, “Oh, Hemingway.” He was just great. And that’s why he got to be so famous and so successful. Actually, that’s not the reason he became so successful. Now don’t get me wrong. He’s an excellent writer just as you may be an excellent writer, but at the outset, at the very beginning, he was an excellent writer who didn’t know anyone, and so no one was publishing his work and he wasn’t making any money. And so essentially he said, “Screw this I’m going to Paris.” And so he left and went to Paris where the living was cheap and he fell in with this artistic community. While he was in Paris, Hemingway met Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and got connected with a bunch of people who eventually connected him to Scribner’s, the publisher who would later publish his novels.

I quote from Jeff Goins article, which I encourage you to read the entire thing because it’s definitely a new perspective, but his article says, “Due to the connections created through that community, Hemingway became one of the most famous writers of the 20th century.” It’s inconceivable such a development could have happened anywhere else. Not because there was something special about the Left Bank in Paris at that time, but because without a network, creative work does not endure. Now since Hemingway’s time, I know that a lot of writers have gone to Paris looking for the inspiration and maybe even the connections that Hemingway found there, and maybe they found them and maybe they didn’t.

What I’m saying is, please do not feel like you need to go to Paris in order to write, or to be able to connect with people or network or find inspiration. You can by all means. Just don’t Hemingway’s success story as any sort of guarantee for yourself. Right now you might be saying, “Okay, Sarah.” Hemingway wasn’t like putting on a business suit and like going to a networking event, he was part of a writer’s group. I’ve spoken before about the power of a writers group, the power that can come from belonging to a tight-knit community of like-minded writers, who encourage you to set goals and reach them. And yes, a writers group is one type of networking, but there are other types as well.

And I would encourage you to explore this, because as I said earlier, as unfortunate as it may sound, it’s all about who you know. So say you’re an introvert and you write every day from your house or your apartment or from the coffee shop across the street. “How am I supposed to meet people? hOW am I supposed to make connections?” You might be asking. And besides, if I’m really a good writer, I can make it on my own. I don’t need anyone else. I thought that too for the longest time. I worked corporate jobs while writing on the side for years and years, and I didn’t meet anyone, because I didn’t really connect with the people at my corporate jobs, to be very honest.

It was hard for me to make friends, and it might be hard for you to make friends. And I want to tell you that I understand all of that, but at the same time, I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t met several key people. And as I continue to talk to successful people more and more, I find that yeah, it is all about who you know. Relationships is what it all comes down to. If you don’t like thinking of it in the, it’s all about who you know, I know that that has an icky ring to it, but it also doesn’t dissolve the fact that it’s true.

I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t met several very key individuals in my life. You may already have some individuals like this in your life, a mentor, someone who’s prominent in your local community, a boss or an older co-worker who can show you the ropes, a librarian at the local library, a member of your writer’s group, a college friend, or a high school friend that you went to school with that now works in blushing. For me, it all happened when I started working at Click Rain. There, I met Peter [inaudible 00:14:17] who introduced me to the concept of podcasting and suggested that I start my own.

There, I was able to attend a year long leadership seminar called the MB Women’s Leadership Program, where I connected with a group of about 25 up and coming leaders in the community. And I noticed a remarkable difference in my life before and after I began connecting with people, a.k.a networking. All of a sudden job opportunities started coming my way, blogging opportunities. When I started my podcast to get even bigger, authors began to get in touch with me to be on my show. I think that this is important that all of this time I took care to build these relationships and to really invest myself in meeting and being present with these people.

I didn’t just shake hands and say pleased to meet you and hand them my business card, slap them on the back and to walk away. I treat them like family. I think that there is an immense and underrated power in just being willing to sit back and listen to someone else talk, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Right now you’re probably saying, “Sarah, I’m an introvert.” “Sarah, I don’t work at a very connected website agency.” “Sarah, I live in a city of millions of people and no one will ever notice me.” “Sarah, I am really shy and uncomfortable meeting people.”

All of these are okay, and you can still enjoy benefits of networking because in this beautiful digital, modern age, you don’t have to see people and meet them face to face in order to meet them and to know them. And in fact, that was the very first place that I started. When I realized that I had trouble making friends at the corporate places I was working, I turned to the internet, like any good nerd does. When I started doing this, Twitter was the big social media platform. And so I jumped on there, back in maybe 2008 and build myself as a writer and started tweeting about writing and books, and my passion for both of them.

Then I realized that, sometimes it’s nice to have something more substantial to tweet about that you’ve written yourself, and so I started blogging. And that’s when I began to build a community of friends online, a.k.a a network of writers who cared about the same things that I did. Now, some people are saying you can’t network over social media. It’s just a bunch of people with megaphones shouting over each other. But I disagree. I think that you can. Online, social media, blogging, this is one place you can begin to network and still be an introvert and feel safe and not go outside of your comfort zone.

I know that everybody’s like, “Oh, step out of your comfort zone.” But I also I’m well aware that that is not possible for many people, and for many years I was included in that group. I had to learn to become a bit of an extrovert, but we’ll talk more about that in a bit. Back to social media and the idea of people just shouting over each other. It takes a long time as anything worth doing does, and no matter what you’re using, if it’s Twitter, Snapchat, Anchor, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, whatever it is you’re using, it takes time to build relationships online just as it takes time to build relationships in real life.

But the wonderful thing about the internet is it gives us close access to all sorts of amazing people that we would have never been able to have access to before. This includes other writers, readers, bloggers, literary agents, all sorts of folks. And if you use social media with the mindset that you’re speaking to people one-on-one instead of shouting into a void, which it often feels like, then I think that’s really where you can find success. I read a lot of books, and every time I read a book, I see if the author is on Twitter, because I’m still a big fan of Twitter. I know that like nobody else is, but I don’t even care. I love Twitter and I know how to use it well and I love it. And I find that a lot of the authors I read are on there.

And so when I finish a book, I see if they’re on Twitter and I send them a little app message. Not a direct message, not private, but just I mention them in a tweet and I say, “Hey, I loved this book. My favorite part was acts.” And every once in a while, maybe about 10 to 20% of the time, the author will respond. And when the author responds, that’s for me, the beginning of a relationship. Like I said, it’s slow going. Not everyone will respond to you, but it’s one way to very slowly build online friendships. But again, you have to treat them like they are personal relationships. You have to be positive and encouraging and not tear others down, because while negative comments may attract attention, it’s not the kind of attention that you want, and you just have to be yourself.

There’s plenty of writers out there that I totally fangirl about, and I would never … I’ve read many of their books and there’s some of the writers that like I’ve never tweeted to, like William Gibson is just … Like he’s so out of my league, but one day, one day I’ll get up the nerve to tweet at him. Another great way to interact with other writers and to really network online, especially if you’re a blogger is to leave comments on blogs. If you become a regular commenter on a community, such as blog comments, or I’ve noticed an increasing popularity in Facebook groups, those are another great way to build your network online. Joining a Facebook group for writers and taking the time, whether it’s five minutes or 10 minutes every day to just scroll through and interact.

Going back to Jeff Goins article, The Unfair Truth About How Creative People Really Succeed, he talks about three things to do while you’re networking, and I think that these really do work. The three things are, number one, help people. Before anything else, help people. So when you’re on a forum, when you’re tweeting to writers, when you’re online, communicating with other creatives, first and foremost, your mission should be to help other people. I think of it as a giving and it’s not a taking attitude. I think if you go into networking looking to take something away from other people or to use other people, then you’re entering into the no good networking is a bad word, sort of networking. Please don’t do that because it will not yield the fruits that you want it to yield.

Second, give away something. People love to be helped, and they love it when you are willing to help them out of the goodness of your heart and then give them something, something of value. Whether it’s your time, a shoulder to cry on, a friend who gives really good book recommendations, someone who’s willing to edit the first page or two of someone else’s work for free, whatever it is, give them something of value. Now, going back to a podcast episode I recorded a while ago, episode 41, should writers be paid. Yes, you should absolutely be paid for your work, but it’s also okay to give small doses of help to people for free.

Another way to put this is just do favors for people. It really does come back to you in the end. Jeff Goins third point is to know how to ask for things at the right time. And this is something that I just am a huge failure at. Like I cannot ask people for anything. And so I’ve got the first two down. I’m good at helping people and I’m good at giving things away for free, but I’m not great at the asking. And he talks about this being where the value of your network really comes back to you.

So you’ve done favors for people and you’ve helped them and shown that you are just an incredibly valuable person. At that point and to not before, is it okay to ask them for something like, “Hey, would you mind taking a look at my manuscript and letting me know if it’s any good?” “Hey, I know that your brother-in-law is a publisher. Can you pass my work along to him?” Again, this is not something I’m good at. It’s not something I’ve ever really done, but it is something that a network can be very valuable for if you have the right foundation in place.

So we’ve talked about networking online, and whether you’re just connecting with people over LinkedIn or joining a Facebook group or tweeting to writers and other bloggers and creatives that you admire, I hope that you are pleasantly surprised by the people you meet and the people who respond to you, but online is not the only way to meet people. It’s just a really good starting place for introverts. Another great way to network with other creatives and other writers is to attend a conference or join an association. Again, conferences might be difficult for introverts.

I remember the very first conference that I went to. I went to alone. It was in Minneapolis and so it was about four hours away, and I was staying in this hotel and then I would go to the conference during the day. And I loved the sessions because I love learning. I’m a lifelong learner. I would sit in the front row and take notes in my little notebook and just be happy as a clam. But the second that each session at the conference ended, I would be like filled with this cold horror that, “Oh, no, I have to like mingle and meet people.” And so as an introvert, I was very uncomfortable and there is this little mixer thing. The first night of the conference that I went to, and I pretty much just hung out a corner, eating free cheese and drinking free wine.

And eventually by the end of the night, I found my way over to a group of computer programmers and felt more comfortable and so kind of nerded out with them a little bit, but it was really uncomfortable, and I want to be very honest about that. Conferences are not for everyone, and going to a conference does not guarantee that you will suddenly emerge from your introvert cocoon like a beautiful butterfly. It took me many conferences and many client meetings in my current position and just constant exposure to talking with people and dealing with the unexpected things that they might say.

I think as an introvert, that’s my worst fear is that I’ll be stuck in a situation and not know what to say. It’s I hate anything unexpected in that way. Like when the phone rings and I don’t know who it is, that’s terrifying for me. Answering the phone is terrifying. You heard it here first. So I guess you know. Email me, text me, whatever. Just never call me ever. I don’t even remember where I was going with that. Oh, that’s right, conferences. Conferences however, if you are more comfortable with people, they can be a great way to meet people. Conferences generally, you gather because you are passionate about something, you were a member of a niche audience and likely everyone else who has paid money to go to this conference has very similar interests and passions to you.

And what my advice is, talk with the speakers if you can. I always stay after sessions and shake hands with the speaker and say, “Hey, I’m following you on Twitter now. You did a great job. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.” If there’re panels at your conference, talk to the panelists, talk to the person who is emceeing or hosting the panel as well. Talk with the people who are running the conference. You might be surprised at the friendships you can establish. So we’ve covered online, social media, blogging, conferences, associations. The last one I want to talk about is the one that’s been most effective for me, and I think that I’ve mentioned this before as a great way to connect with a mentor, but I call this the cup of coffee.

This one can also be very good for introverts. If you can get past the hurdle of being willing to get in touch with somebody you admire, someone nearby in your community and invite them to sit down over a cup of coffee, your treat, of course, it’s just, I can’t explain what an amazing experience this can be, or maybe I should because I’m podcasting about it and you just don’t want to take my word on it. So I learned about the cup of coffee from my leadership program. In fact, it was kind of an assignment that we had to do. We had to think of someone in the community that we admired and either call them or send them an email, and of course, since I’m terrified of the phone, I sent an email, just saying like, “Hey, I really admire your work. I’m this person.” And explain who you are and invite them to sit down for a cup of coffee.

Say, I’d love to just treat you to a cup of coffee and hear your story, or pick your brain or whatever phrase you want to use. And what happens is, you meet at a coffee shop, can be before work. If you can scoot away during work, you can do that. I can’t. So for me, it’s usually before work or right after work. You buy them a cup of coffee, which even if you’re cash strapped is two or $3 at the very most, or depending where you live. I’m in the Midwest where people are frugal and things are cheap. So for me, it’s not a huge investment, but you thank them for coming, and you say, “I really admire this or this. And I’m just so curious to hear about X, Y, or Z.”

And like I said earlier, the very most important thing you can do is sit back, make eye contact and listen. We live in a world of megaphones, social media platforms, people screaming about politics. Listening is a rare quality, but I think it is also something that we as writers possess naturally. I think that writers are natural listeners. We’re always listening and looking around and being observant. We’re listening for, how does dialogue sound? What makes it natural? How do people speak? What stories are they telling? We’re natural listeners. And especially as introverts, I think we’re natural listeners. We like to process what we hear. I cannot tell you the number of people who I have sat down with who simply are just hungry for a chance to talk and have someone else listen to them and to be genuinely interested and ask smart questions.

Don’t drive the conversation. Don’t spill your guts about your life history, because until people really know you and to trust you, this is going to sound a little callous, but they may not care super deeply about you from the start. Networking and creating any sort of relationship begins on a foundation of trust. People need to know that they can trust you. And so be genuine, be polite, be interested, ask questions, and most importantly, listen, and thank them for their time. I said this is good for introverts because hey, it’s one-on-one, and so it’s not intimidating. You’re not speaking in front of a crowd. You’re not crushed by people. I mean, depending where you meet, maybe you meet in a very crowded coffee place.

But there’s also this lovely, no pressure situation where you are free to just listen to their story and listen to them speak about they got to where they are today or about how they solved problem X, or what they’re doing about situation Y. You’re just there to drink it in. And there’s something very freeing about that. So no matter what type of writer you are, if you’re a blogger, fiction writer, non-fiction, if you write for your career, if you’re a ghost writer, or if you’re looking to do any of these things, knowing the right people can really give you a boost. They can recommend you, they can write blurbs for your book. They can connect you with other people who might be able to help you.

I think networking got its sort of dirty word status because it’s become associated with using people. And again, I want to reiterate that you are not using people. You are placing yourself before them as a servant almost, as someone who can help them, as someone who can add value to their lives, as someone who’s willing to pay it forward before they even receive anything. And I think that when you’re willing to do that, you’ll begin to see things come back to you. This is how you build trust. This is how you build credible relationships with people. This is how you show you care. And I think that you’ll be really pleased and impressed with the results that it brings to you.

At the end of the day, it is all about who you know. And so let me empower you to put yourself out there, whether in person or digitally. Reach out to other people, let them know that you’re there, let them know that you are alive and that you are creating things, reach out. And though you may be turned down once or twice or 10 times, eventually you’ll find someone who reaches back out to you. This week’s book of the week is Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey. And yes, after like a billion weeks, I finally finished reading this book, which is in its very own way, a Leviathan in and of itself. This is one of my very few favorite genres. It’s a science fiction epic.

And while I was reading it, it reminded me a lot of Battlestar Galactica or Firefly or any of those band of ragtag team of people in space, and it’s beautifully written. It’s enormously moving. The characters are rich and well drawn and interesting. I just thought it was really marvelous. I don’t want to say a whole lot because there’s so many twists and turns that happen with the plot, that I hate spoilers. I hate them so much, and I do not want to spoil this amazing book for you. It does take a while to slog through, as you can see, but it is well worth it. If you like sci-fi, even if you don’t like sci-fi and you want to try it out for the first time, this is I think probably a really great starting point for you. It’s extremely readable in the way that the Game of Thrones books are very readable.

There’s not a lot of funky alien names with lots of Zs and apostrophes in them. And in fact, well, again, I don’t want to spoil it for you, but what you’ll find here is a beautifully, deeply moving story of humans being humans and love and loss and shock and adventure. It’s sci-fi, it’s film noir, it’s mystery, it’s adventure. It’s so very many things. It does have adult language and adult themes. So if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing, this is not the right book for you, but if you’re willing to give it a try, I think you’ll enjoy it.

I remember reading Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer quite a while ago. And for whatever reason … No, actually I know exactly the reason, but this book really, really echoed the sense that I got when I read that book too. It’s sort of a beautifully haunting desolate human spirit kind of feel. So let me know your thoughts. If you’ve read it, if you are interested in reading it, let me know. I just, I recommend this with two very enthusiastic thumbs up. I want to end this week’s episode as I end every episode by thanking you. Seriously, thank you for listening. Thank you for reaching out to me. Thank you for connecting with me. Thank you for writing. The world needs your story and it needs to hear your voice, and I’m so glad that you’re either taking steps to create that story, or even just thinking about it.

Special thanks this week go out to not only you my listeners, but also to my Patreon supporters. Patreon is a secure third party donation platform where people can give a dollar in episode, $2 in episode, 10, whatever. There’s no limits. See, I’m asking for something. Look at this, look at me, I’m growing you guys. I’m growing. This is me growing as a person. If you would like to become a Patreon on Patreon, there are links in the episode show notes. There’s also, if you go to my website, sarahwerner.com, one of the main pages, one of the tabs at the top is tip jar, and you can go there and choose either Patreon or PayPal as a way to give. So if you are so inclined, I would dearly appreciate it.

Special thanks go to official cool cat Sean Locke, official bookworms, Matthew Paulson and Rebecca Werner. Official rad dude, Andrew Coons, and several other donors who wish to remain anonymous. You are all just so amazing. Thank you so much. I would also like to thank writer, Jeff Goins. He does so much. I follow him on medium and I follow him on Twitter and I’ve bought all of his books and he’s just a really great humble dude who loves to write and who I think very genuinely wants to see other writers succeed.

So once again, I’ve linked to the article that I referenced in today’s show notes, but I also encourage you to follow him on Twitter or Facebook or wherever you happen to be. I think that he’ll provide great value to you. And with that, this has been episode 43 of the Write Now podcast. The podcast that helps aspiring writers to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and to write everyday. I’m Sarah Werner, and I hope that you find as much joy and power in networking as I have.