Episode 54: How does community make me a better author?

In this week’s episode, JP and Crys talk all about the benefits of finding your author community. 

Show Notes

Write Away Podcast Patreon

Take Back Your Book by Katlyn Duncan

How to Write Manga: Your Complete Guide to the Secrets of Japanese Comic Book Storytelling by RA Paterson

Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo

Body Language in 40 Days by Jesus Enrique Rosas

Story or Die by Lisa Cron

Transcript

JP: Hello, friends. This is episode number 54 of the Write Away Podcast, and it is the 29th of July, 2021 as we are recording. I’m JP Rindfleisch with my cohost…

Crys: Crys Cain.

JP: Hello, Crys. How has your writing week been?

Crys: I am writing, which is good. I think I mentioned last week that I had written like once in two weeks and my cowriter and I are on a push to get this book done, which we’ve been on a push for a while, and then just not pushed.

But we have a deadline, we have to get to the editor. We have to publish it. So we’re in a push to get this book done. Getting words done. It’s great.

In van life adventures, I’ve pulled all of the cupboard doors off, all the hardware off. I’ve got paint and sandpaper and all that, and she’s starting to look pretty, and I’m excited.

JP: Very nice. Are you ready? You ready to van life?

Crys: I’m so ready. And part of me is frustrated that I’m taking all this time, like I’m not leaving until the fifth, but part of me is frustrated that I’m doing all of this work because that makes the van less usable for a couple of days, like I can’t just zoom easily.

But I know that I’ll be so much happier on the road if it’s a little prettier and it’s easier to clean. Cause right now the wood has a very old, like varnish on it. And it’s very orangy looking as old varnish tends to get to look. And so I’m sanding it and I’m painting it high gloss white. So I can see when it’s dirty and I can clean it easily because it’s high gloss. And I’m really excited about that in the long run.

Today I will be doing work to build that second bed. And I just placed an order on Amazon for some of the fun things like my handheld clothes washer. It’s basically a bag that has scrubbies on the inside and then you go chhh with your hands and wash three pieces of clothing at a time.

So it might be a thing where we like, at the end of every day, like we just wash yesterday’s clothes and then hang them up to dry overnight, so that we never have a ton of laundry once we are out Midwest and we won’t be staying with friends for a couple of days kind of thing.

JP: Awesome. I can’t wait to hear more about these van life adventures. I’m so excited.

Crys: Yeah. I need to figure out a decent way to share videos and pictures. I have been putting stuff up on my TikTok a little bit. But I haven’t taken the time to sit down and build the story. Cause TikTok is so story-driven and I think that’s one of the reasons why I like it so much as a storyteller. But when it comes to storytelling about my life, I have a much more difficult time when I’m not talking one to one. Like one to one, I can tell you all about my chaos and make it fun and interesting, but there’s not like a lesson. Just recounting events to people who don’t know you and don’t know the context is a completely different form.

JP: Yeah, definitely.

Crys: Yeah. How was your writing week?

JP: It was good, with that inflection.

Crys: There’s some Chinese meaning there.

JP: Oh, let me get to that. No, so it was decent. I’m at the hotel for the day job. And I’ve been here since Friday, so I was here over the weekend. And over the weekend there turned out to be nothing I needed to do.

So I went to the closest city and I hung out in their artsy districts and I actually got a ton of writing done, which was fantastic. And then every day I’ve been able to get a little bit of writing in which has been nice. But these last couple of days have not been so nice in getting the writing in, which I think it’s just overload from work. And then I was also trying to do writing both in the morning and at night, and I’m the kind of person that needs to relax, but I don’t like relaxing at the hotel. So I think I just need one night where I’m just like, calm down, stop beating yourself up over not writing and just relax and just be happy. And then I think the words will come a little easier.

My week, it’s been good so far. Oh, and because I did say that I promised you I had something on that. I got a Chinese fortune the other day that told me the fact that others are bad, does not imply that you are good. Which is probably the rudest fortune I’ve ever received in my life. But also probably highly accurate.

Crys: Yes. I love that so much. I want a sticker that says that.

JP: Right? It’s just you’re a bad person. And I’m like you’re not wrong.

Crys: You may not be good just because others are bad. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately as well, both in business and personal life. Kind of this expectation that, that no matter good or bad, that you will conform to the common whatever. Whether it’s the common standard of indie publishing and the actions that you do, or the common standard of how you interact with the world for whatever area you’re in. And that just because everyone’s doing something, doesn’t make it good or bad.

And often it’s probably bad. But we’ll delve into this a little bit with indie publishing. We’re going to talk about community. All the time, and I was like this in the beginning as well, but all the time people are asking like, is it better to do this or that? What’s the best way to do this? How should I do a launch? And there are really common ways to do launches, but that doesn’t mean that they’re the best way for you.

I was talking about that with a friend this morning. Katlyn Duncan, if your people are looking for another awesome writer who has a book coming out on reclaiming your rights from a publisher to indie publish them. I think she has that up on pre-order. So if that is something that you struggle with as an author, that you’ve had your rights with traditionally published people and you want to grab them back her book will be awesome. And that’s K-A-T-L-Y-N, link will be in the show notes.

Anyways, I was talking with her this morning because she, in strengths terms, is very deliberative. And so she has as a very structured release plan and all the steps she needs to do to get there. And there’s another person in our group who is strategic. So very similar skills with different twists on them. And she is also really structured in her release plan. And I am not.

I have a basic structure because I think that is the best way to not go crazy and make sure you hit all the basics. But I literally just throw books out there and activate my release plan. That’s what I do. And there’s nothing wrong with either way.

Anyways, our topic, before we just jump into conversation and we forget to announce it is: how does my community, specifically my writer author community, make me a better author?

And so one, the ability to discuss all of these different options with people that you trust and who aren’t just trying to force their way on you. And being able to access all the different experiences, I’m thinking particularly about launches right now but this applies to everything, just gives you such a wider perspective that would take you so long to build as an individual working on your own to figure out which things you think are most likely to work for you. That is invaluable.

JP: Yeah. I 100% agree. It really wasn’t until I joined a community that I noticed that everything about the aspect of writing had just improved exponentially. And I can’t even imagine what it would have been like just doing it on my own. Which in those terms, it was just listening to podcasts on my own and thinking like, oh, I can just listen to these things and be good and I don’t need that communication.

And I think basically what happened was when I went to the Rock Apoc in 2019, the author led event by J thorn and Zach Bohannan, that was the moment I was like, oh, I need community. I’m a person that needs this.

And part of the reason why I brought this up as a potential topic for us to talk about is someone more recently was talking to me and basically they said don’t trust anyone because you’re competing either for contracts or an audience. And I was like, that’s not what I do at all. So I was curious about your take on this kind of stuff.

Crys: Yeah. That is very anti how I operate as well. I don’t understand, which does not make them wrong, but I don’t understand writers who can operate without having an author community.

And a lot of authors feel as if they don’t actually have a choice, that they find it really difficult to find an author community. And they’re like, I want one, how do you find that? And we belong to The Author Success Mastermind, which is a paid one. Facebook groups are a little bit more difficult because not everybody’s necessarily on the same page.

They’re big, they’re anonymous ish. Going to conferences is a great option. Local meetups can sometimes be great, sometimes be terrible. But so often I see writers ask, like, how do you make writer friends? Like, how do you find writer friends? And they’re still writing and they’re pushing forward. And I’m like, I don’t know how you do it. When I didn’t have a writing community, when I didn’t have a writing friend. I did all throughout high school, I had a best friend who also wrote, and so we wrote and we shared our stuff with each other, and that energy kept me going. College, basically didn’t write except when the one time I was in a creative writing class. And even then it was weird, because it was not genre focused.

And so we had poets and our creative nonfiction and me, science fiction and fantasy. And no one was like super down on it, but they just totally didn’t get it kind of thing, which is fine. And then I went a couple of years after I moved to Nashville, no writer group. Finally started going to the Nashville Writers Meetup and started writing again.

And I think part of it is accountability. Even if you don’t have an accountability system set up, there’s still this people are talking about what they’re writing and saying that they’re writing. And you also want to say that you’re writing that you’re actively producing things. And yeah, like that is so invaluable to me.

I just don’t write when I don’t have people to talk to about writing.

JP: Yeah. And I noticed that for me, before going to that event, I know that I had gone on a couple of Facebook groups for writing, but it’s so anonymous. And that just, that doesn’t click with me. I like having that kind of interpersonal conversations.

So really it wasn’t until I met J Thorn in person and I met that group in person, and we had been chatting on Slack, which was a small group of under 20 people. It wasn’t really until that moment that I was like, oh, this is the type of community that I’m looking for. And that kind of built into, I would say for anyone who is wanting a community like that, go to those little mini author events or go to author events where it’s this one-time paid event or not paid event, but we’re talking like 200 people or less.

And if you could ideally find an event that’s 20 people, maybe it may not work out the first few times you go, maybe you may not click with that group. But that’s the kind of thing I did to try, and luckily the first one I went to worked out really well. But that’s the kind of things that I did.

And then that’s when I found my community was by going and physically being at these events. Now there are limitations for some people or COVID, so even Zoom events I think hold some merit in that sense.

Crys: Yeah. Particularly if it’s something you’re meeting regularly on so that you get to know people. Cause I just want to define, clearly you’re not fully anonymous on Facebook, people see your real name. But what we are using anonymous to describe is that you don’t actually have a chance to get to know someone because you’re not sitting down and having any kind of real conversation together.

You’re having like a focused discussion on topics occasionally. But you’re not sitting down with one person or a couple of people and really building a conversation and following its tangents. It’s more like an office meeting. So it’s devoid of your true self and personality and the context of who each person is as a human being.

JP: Exactly, 100%. I guess maybe I view anonymous because I think that people catfish all the time.

Crys: There’s also that. And I said anonymous too, because I think that’s true. I think it is very like anonymous, not by name, but by being.

JP: This, I hate this phrase, but there’s little skin in the game. I hate even saying that, but that’s the concept–

Crys: Does that make you feel like a dude, bro?

JP: It sure do.

Crys: I want to cycle back to that idea of competition though, because we do meet people who think that way. I meet them very rarely these days because I’m pretty particular what kind of events I go to and who I hang out with. Anything that J and Zach do of course, is not going to be competition focused.

I would even say for the most part 20booksto50K also is super focused on community and raising each other up. Because it’s so large, it does have more of that anonymous feel, but if you go to a 20books event, it’s not going to be competition focus. There will be competition focused people there, it’s so large and varied that you’re not going to avoid that, but you do have the opportunity to meet some people who are really focused on finding other people to work in community with.

JP: Yeah. I think part of it is, you may see this more in the traditional publishing world, because there is the scarcity that is created when you have a publisher who is controlling who gets the green light and who doesn’t. So if you go to events where you may have pitch wars and they may not verbally say, we only are going to accept, I don’t know, 23 pitches, but that’s a competition. And you can approach it in the sense that I am up against the rest of these people and I am either better than them. Or, you can go at it with that competition approach, or you can go with the mindset that we’re all in this together. We all have great pitches and this group of people is just going to decide who fits their model.

That doesn’t mean that who’s better. And I don’t know, I hate the concept of competition in that sense, because I’ve seen authors go to these events and they don’t approach it in the sense of competition because it isn’t a competition. You’re just seeing if you fit the model of what they are looking for.

Crys: Yeah. Our friend, Janet Kitto recently participated in something like this and her goal was not to “win.” Her goal was to challenge herself and to work on getting her book out there and seeing what kind of feedback she could get and seeing what opportunities might come from it. She looked at very much as a potential.

Now there are some people who are very competition focused and that drives them successfully and healthfully. I just don’t happen to be one of them. To the point where I will like I refuse to enter any competition things at this point.

JP: And I think too, that any event that garners that mindset is not an event that I’m going to go to.

If we’re talking about going to conventions and the first time I go, it’s super toxic and everyone is basically rude to each other, then I have no reason to ever go to that again. Because that’s not my people. Even if my potential audience is there, I still think that there holds merit in having a group of authors that are in it together and presenting that as a real healthy thing that the audience can see. And so even if I were to be in an event where I have potential audience, but every author there is toxic to each other, I have no reason to be there.

Crys: So Mark Leslie Lefebvre mentioned this group a couple of years ago at a workshop I was in, and I believe it’s The Jewels of Historical Romance. And they are a group of authors who support each other. They have a website where they like take turns posting about historical fiction. I don’t know if it’s still active. It was a couple of years. But one of the really cool things they would do is every quarter or so they would put together a catalog of all of the new releases that their members had put together. And then they would mail that to the distributors like the indie distributors. So they’d mail it to Kobo and they’d send a box of Hershey’s kisses from The Jewel.

And so they were supporting each other in really cool ways that I’ve not really heard of anybody else doing. And it’s something that I’ve wanted to do in some way for the stuff I write in. And one, have not had the time. And two, have not had the books that I want in the genres I want to share yet. So that’s something I always have in the back of my mind.

Like how can a collective step outside the box of newsletter shares and share each other’s stuff. So one of these ways might be, if you have a friend who’s really good at project management, if five of you were like, Hey, we really want to push into libraries, figuring out a way for one person to organize that. And then you all figure out how to reach out to your libraries for the group. But you have farther reach because you’ve got five people doing all the work for the same group of books versus one person trying to do all the work for their books. I know there’s just a lot of really cool ways that beyond…

So there’s like the support, the personal support, but there’s also the business support. Not necessarily just in information, but in actual action. I just don’t know how you can low stress build your author business successfully. You can absolutely build your author business successfully by yourself, but it’s going to be dang stressful. That’s not my road.

JP: Yeah. And I think what you said about the group, The Jewels, what was it again?

Crys: I think it’s The Jewels of Historical Fiction, or historical romance.

JP: Like as a reader going to an event or a con, and even if they have a little insignia or if they have like at their booth a table or piece of paper that says the other authors that are in this group, like that kind of stuff intrigues me as a reader.

It was really fun to learn that CS Lewis and Tolkien, as a reader, it’s really cool to see that even authors can go at this together. And I think that even at events where it may be what I had previously said is toxic, going to those events as a group collective may change the dynamic at those places.

Crys: I don’t know if you follow trends in indie publishing outside of your genre, but there was a push, I don’t know if it was in 2019 or 2020. Yeah. The years blend together, these particular two years. But in February of one of those years, 13 urban fantasy paranormal romance authors made a push to create paranormal women’s fiction, which is a paranormal romance with main characters who are above 40 years of age. And those 13 authors are referred to by their readers as the Fab 13. And it’s actually, I’ve been watching this, and there is a status symbol being one of the Fab 13. People will be like, I’ve read all the Fab 13, now I need to stretch out. So like people, if you want to read paranormal women’s fiction, people start with the Fab 13, they exhaust the Fab 13, and then they move on to other authors in the genre, which is just fascinating.

And these women banded together. They released all their books very quickly, promote each other, and made a genre, made a sub-genre through their efforts.

JP: And if you think about it too, formulating this kind of group and being able to have authors that you can point other readers to, and know that those authors will eventually point back to you when you have something in release, that’s exactly what we’re looking for. Because we know that readers are not beholden to one author. But if we can create a group that contains the genre that we write in that we know people like, then we can vet for the author. We know that their content is good which is vetting. And then we know that because of the friendship that we’ve created with that author, that they will point back at us. So I think that’s an amazing example of exactly what I think the purpose of creating an author community is for.

Crys: And my coauthor and I, in our little mini romance genre, have worked really hard to push some newbie authors that we’ve read their books, really enjoyed their books, get to know them as people. And if they’re not selling super well and we’re like, you deserve it both as a human and as a writer, like your stories are fab. We’ve pushed them to better sales by promoting them and mentioning them and pushing readers their way.

Now, people, this is not a reason to friend super successful authors. It is a side benefit occasionally. And yeah, that’s the fun part of building up writer friends from scratch is you never know who’s going to be successful. And when you’re actual friends, like everybody wins. Like you get the benefit from your friends being successful when you don’t have a competition mindset.

JP: Yeah. And that was in the back of my head that I knew that creating friendships with authors is beneficial for both directions. For me, when I knew that I couldn’t necessarily offer anything that would promote their books, I would offer, hey, I love science. This is my jam. If you ever write anything that is in regards to biochemistry or anything along those lines, I’m more than happy to take a look at it. And then I can provide you with some feedback and provide sources for my feedback. Because I know that if we’re talking science, it needs to be pretty hard and rules.

Not just going in and expecting people to hand the things to me on a silver platter, I’m going in and saying, what can I offer to this group? Knowing that I am just beginning. So I can’t offer what everyone else offers, but I have one or two or three things that I can do that can help grow as a whole.

Crys: When I write Schoolies of the Apocalypse, I’m definitely going to have to come to you for the science.

JP: That’s perfect. I already know how to rejuvenate diesel, so you’re good.

Cool. Do we have anything else we want to talk about?

Crys: I think it’s worth just mentioning what I think is the obvious, but always worth mentioning in case it’s not, that having a community gives you somewhere to run your craft by people, run your stories by people and find critique partners or writing groups or classes that you take together and improve your craft.

Yeah, you can absolutely do this in just a class setting. But I find a lot of benefit in getting to know an author’s style, who’s a writer friend, and being able to critique or contribute to things that are particularly useful for them, versus just a generic oh, here’s what is standard.

For instance, I have a one writer friend who disagrees with American punctuation, so they made up their own rules. And I’m like, I don’t care if you make up your own rules as long as it’s consistent and understandable. And so we made a style sheet and that’s what we use with their work.

I don’t remember what it is at the moment because it’s been three or four years since they’ve written anything. But I was like, you know what? It’s consistent. You have reasons for why you believe this. And that’s a unique thing about you. Let’s go for it. You’re indie publishing, who cares. Most readers don’t know where things should go anyways. The few who are grammar nerds might get really offended, but they’re really minor, even if they’re really vocal.

JP: I think the only thing is when you read it through, if you aren’t seeing it, then you’re just going to hit the grammar people. So it’s a percentage wise of like, how many people do you want to upset.

Crys: But bringing it back to the community part, like I’m able to not get distracted about that because I know that this is their particular way of doing things.

And as we’re getting to know each other’s work, I don’t know actually if you’ve read anything of mine. But I’ve now read a short story and I’m started on your novel. And I’m seeing like what particular patterns you have that either we’ve developed a short code where I can just call out and be like, “meh,” if it’s like a boring description. I don’t have to be like, “boring description.”

I just go, “meh.” Or like repeated words in a paragraph or whatever, and just knowing, Hey, this is a thing that he does really often, so we’ll just call those out. And knowing that you really like playing with words. And so if I think of a fun word thing, I can mention that.

And that’s the kind of feedback that you enjoy. If we were in an anonymous group, I wouldn’t know those things. And so I probably wouldn’t do them.

JP: Yep. Totally. Or you’d have to like overexplain, which makes it even more difficult because then it’s what are you trying to actually say?

And then it takes you more time to try and make that piece. This is part of the reason why I really like TASM, which I know that we are basically promoting TASM for free. J, if you’re listening to this, we’ll totally take payments.

Crys: I do take payments already.

What is the FTC disclosure? Like I do benefit from TASM subscriptions.

JP: Affiliated with or something.

Okay, fine, whatever. But what I do like about TASM, is that it is focused around the three-story method. So a lot of people that come into there know of it, at least in some term or another.

And so it becomes a short code, this language that we can use that then makes it so that if we were to critique others, even if we haven’t been critiqued by them before, there should be some type of a simplified language between the two. It may not be the same with every newcomer that comes in, but I know that there is a large group of people in that group that know this method that they can then use it.

So I think if you find an author community that maybe subscribes to a certain method you like, or something along those lines, that is so helpful because there’s a part of story structure that makes it so easy when everyone just has the same language.

Crys: Yeah. I’ve seen communities build up around particular writing teachers. Mary Robinette at Kowal, Margie Lawson, Holly Lyle, these are all teachers who have built communities around the way that they teach things so that the students can support each other. That’s another great way to find a writing community, because if you jive with something a particular teacher says or how they teach something, chances are you’re going to jive with other people who also like them.

What should we ask our dear listeners this week, JP?

JP: I’m curious to know: what communities other authors are in? If they’re willing to share. Even if it’s just like saying, oh, I’m in a local community, or if they want to share links to any favorite communities that they’re in.

Crys: And my follow up would be, what is it that you get out of that community?

All right. Thank you so much for joining us this week. As always remember that we have a Patreon. So if our episodes are helpful to you in any ways, you can support us for as little as a dollar a month. At higher levels, you have the ability to join in on our book clubs, help choose our book of the month, and listen to our extra special episodes as we plan our business year with tarot.

JP: Our August book will be How to Write Manga: Your Complete Guide to the Secrets of Japanese Comic Book Storytelling by RA Paterson. And our September 2021 book club poll is up and we currently have three books in the ranking. Everything is Figureoutable by Marie Forleo, Body Language in 40 Days by Jesus Enrique Rosas, and Story or Die by Lisa Cron.

Crys: Thanks so much for joining us again. And we will see you next week.