Business and networking

I just finished a grueling and wonderfully amazing three day seminar: The Superstars of Writing. I am wonderfully exhausted from an intense overload of information and networking. I loved every minute.

As a writer, I am constantly working to improve my craft through reading books, taking classes and workshops, attending conferences, and of course by writing. But one thing that is hard to find is other writers sharing with you the business of being a writer. How do you find successful people willing to give you hints, debunk myths, give you a behind the scenes view, and tell you the straight 411 on any business. That is what this seminar does. That is what five immensely successful, NY Times best-selling authors shares with you. I believe in this enough to endorse it.

The authors involved are Kevin J Anderson, Brandon Sanderson, David Farland/Wolverton, Eric Flint and Rebecca Moesta. They are all SciFi / Fantasy writers, but what they share is valuable to any writer, whether you write non-fiction or fiction in any genre. If you do not know who they are, I recommend checking them out - you'll be impressed.

Now, onto some general thoughts. There are professions in this world where networking is crucial. Writing is one of them. Yes, it is an art and you have to be able to craft an appealing product that people want to to read. But getting that writing published and in the readers' hands requires a lot of networking. Doing it without the networking is possible, but it makes your job about a thousand times harder. So, a writer needs to attend conferences and meet industry people.

Another type of networking is that with your peers. This is the kind also done at conferences, but done too at writing groups of a wide variety. Peer networking gives you new friends and new resources for specialized information in everything from legal to medical to puppetry advice. These will be your peers that come up through the ranks with you. Before CS Lewis (Chronicles of Narnia) and JRR Tolkein (Lord of the Rings) were the epic writers known the world round, they were peers sitting in a coffee shop talking writing with each other (fact).

I am talking writing, but this applies to life, my friends. Meet and be nice to one another, you never know when you have met someone who will play an important role in your journey through this world.