Five Ways
Subscribe to my newsletter and get a free story!
Share this:

Networking with Purpose and Sincerity

Pebbles on the BeachIt’s natural for writers to want to spread word of our work. We all realize that, short of hiring a publicist, we’re our own best champions. But if we go too far, or are too single-minded in that pursuit, we can come off as boorish and arrogant.

To do it successfully, keep some things in mind.

  • Push the good stuff. In an ideal world, everything you have appearing is amazing and wonderful, but if your experience is closer to mine, some stories are stronger than others. Pick the best, and when you’re mentioning that you’re eligible for something, point to those and not to an exhaustive list of everything published that year. Presumably you’ve got a bibliography available somewhere on your website (here’s mine, for example), and if anyone wants to see everything you produced, they can check that out.
  • Pay it back, in spades. Want other people to feel inclined to spread word of your stuff? Then make sure you’re doing it for them. If you read a story you like online, point other people to it in a blog post or on whatever social network you use. Drop the author a note and say why you liked it. Don’t sit back and expect glory to come your way, whether or not it’s well-deserved. Make nominations and recommendations, and vote. Go to other people’s readings. If you’ve got to pass up an opportunity, try to steer it towards someone that needs it. You don’t need to be insincere about any of this. Praise the stuff you like, and if you’re having trouble finding it, you should be looking harder.
  • Monitor and maintain connections. Pay attention to other people’s events and celebrate their victories. Just be a decent human being, and life will be better overall (at least, in my experience. If you’re a personality type damaged by human interaction, take all of this with a suitably-sized grain of salt.) This is part of paying it back, really, but it’s more than that. It’s being aware of the people around you. I stress it because I’m bad about it and it’s something I’ve been trying to be extra mindful of lately.
  • Listen more than you talk. This helps with maintaining connections. Remember that sometimes communication isn’t about what’s being said, but about the act of performing it. Time is one of our most valuable commodities – to say to someone that you want to share yours is a valuable thing. (But at the same time, remember that other people’s time is just as valuable to them. What you view as quality time spent with them, they may think of as time they could be spending on something else.)
  • Eyes on the prize. As with so many other things in life, time spent doing this is time spent not writing. If you’re thinking of networking as a career-building activity, make sure you’ve got an actual career to build on. The greatest network in the world won’t do you much good unless you’re actually producing something.

One Response

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get Fiction in Your Mailbox Each Month

Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.

Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.

 

"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."

~K. Richardson

You may also like...

WIP: Doctor Fantastik Part III

Tabita interrupted. She was a classic old crone of Tabat, her skin darkened from exposure to the salt wind, her hair cut short in the manner of sailors, which older women affected due to its easiness, if they had retained enough hair to make the style dignified.

Tabita had. She was a severe but elegant woman of perhaps sixty, with turquoise eyes and a string of amber around her neck. “They say ghosts linger because of unfinished business,” she said to the Doctor. “Is that true?”

He stroked his whiskers, eying the squid pudding that trembled like a fever patient in the center of the table. “On occasion, ma’am, aye.”

“Is that why our twins linger then? Some unfinished business?”

“It is more likely that one or the other of them does not realize she is dead,” he said, parceling out a fragment of the pudding, which smelled better than it looked. An oily sheen rainbowed its surface.

“How could they not know that?” a waitress squeaked, he wasn’t sure which one.

Doctor Fantastik fixed her with a portentous eye. No particular amount of ghost energy clung to her, other than the growth that covered them all, the ectoplasmic snail ooze that ghosts could not help but exude and which grew throughout this building, shaggy and slimy as rotting moss.

Enjoy this sample of Cat’s writing and want more of it on a weekly basis, along with insights into process, recipes, photos of Taco Cat, chances to ask Cat (or Taco) questions, discounts on and news of new classes, and more? Support her on Patreon.

...

Post WorldCon: Happy Daze

It’s the day after the last day of Chicon 7, and I have caught up a little on sleep. I had one of the best times I’ve ever had at a convention, and the book launch party went (IMO) swimmingly. Lots of people showed up, people really loved the jewelry and the stickers, and everyone seems to think the book design almost as cool as I do.

Some people who helped make it the most awesome of cons were: Al Bogdan, who’s provided some lovely party pics; the enigmatic Folly Blaine/Christy Johnson, who is always good con company; Randy Henderson, who pitched in when needed and also kept everyone from taking things too seriously; Stina Leicht, whose book And Blue Skies From Pain was also being promoted at the party and who was an excellent co-host as well as providing a vicarious experience of being on the ballot 😉 ; Vicki Saunders, who trekked and fiddled and above all, kept me from stressing (too much); Dallas Taylor, bartender extraordinaire and always, always, always Tod McCoy for being one of the prime instigators of all this madness.

Various highlights:

  1. Watching the Hugo Awards from the bar with Folly Blaine, Gio Clairval, and Tod McCoy and supplying what John Scalzi was saying since we didn’t have any sound.
  2. Lovely lunch with Kay Kenyon and all too brief Louise Marley time.
  3. Several people thanking me for personalized rejections from Fantasy, and one young man saying that rejection was one of the reasons why he was still writing.
  4. As always, meeting many people I knew from correspondence or social networking and getting a chance to put faces and voices to the icons and screen names. Two I was particularly excited to meet were Gio Clairval and Jay Caselberg.
  5. Getting to squee like a fangirl upon meeting Sharon Shinn.
  6. A stint at the SFWA table and getting to stroke Catherine Lundoff’s lovely book cover for Silver Moon, which is a kickass novel about menopausal women turning into werewolves, which I’m downloading onto my Kindle asap.
  7. The Broud Universe Rapidfire Reading, which was jampacked with great stuff, including a closing filk song, which was about the nicest way to end a reading that I’ve seen or heard in a long time.
  8. Getting to see Rachel Swirsky in full and beautiful glitter.
  9. A lot more which is still full of happy, giddy blur, so if I’m overlooking you, it is because my memory is still aswirl. 😉

...

Skip to content