The Art of Hangin' Out

by R.S. Mellette

I've been a bit quiet recently.  I haven't posted here or the Dances With Films blog in a couple of months. On Agent Query Connect, I'm lucky if I get to pop on for a quick word association post.  Not that I expect anyone to notice my absence, but I have.

Soon I'm going to have some happy news to announce, and it is due in no small part to both the amount of time I've hung out with my favorite groups, and the time I've selfishly stolen away from them.

That combination of time with, and time away from, my peers got me to thinking of the art of hangin' out.

Over the years I've been involved with theatre companies, writing groups, online communities, film festivals, film production companies, etc. and I've come to realize there is a delicate balance in the ratio of the individual helping the group, and the group helping the individual.  There's a Zen quality to this balance.  Each individual in a group wants to better his or her life by being a member, but members who only lookout for themselves rarely gain anything from the group.  Similarly, an individual who disregards their needs to only support the group, can become very important within the group, but have little success outside of it.

Writers, especially, struggle with this balance.  Without a trusted collection of beta readers, editors, walls to bounce ideas off of, etc. a writer's skills will wither.  Yet, I'm sure we all know writers with sage advice from past experiences who eagerly say, "Here's what I think of what I've read of your manuscript...", but haven't put their own words to the page in decades. 

So when I find myself in a group, I constantly measure my surroundings.  Are the people I'm working with on my level?  Are they too far above or below me?  That can be neither an exercise of inferiority nor snobbery, but an honest judgment.  I find myself most comfortable in a group where I fall somewhere in the middle.  I can learn by teaching others, and hopefully follow colleagues through doors they've opened.  Often, the doors are opened by a person you taught not so long ago.

There is a trap in staying with a group where your talent and experience is head and shoulders above the others. Laurels become easy chairs and ego strokes fill you up with empty calories.

In a group where your resume doesn't come close to the others, you can quickly become the king or queen of the servants.  Sure, your peers will be impressed, but what chances do you have of standing out or making your mark in the world?  These are good places to learn and move on.

In my current groups: Dances With Films, Agent Query Connect, and From The Write Angle, I feel at home.  So much so that I'm comfortable stepping away to work on my own stuff for a while.  Then to humbly return.  Sure, I want to show off what I've done - but I also want to find out what I've missed.  Whose success can I be happily jealous of?  What has changed?  What has remained the same?  How can I help the group?  I don't need to ask how the group can help me, because they have done so much already.

They've given me a home.  I suppose that's the best way to gauge a support group.  Do they feel like home?  And by that, of course, I mean that ideal home we see in all of the commercials and 1950s TV shows, not the dysfunctional homes that turned so many people into artists in the first place.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, it's good to be home.


R.S. Mellette is an experienced screenwriter, actor, director, and novelist. You can find him at the Dances With Films festival blog, and on Twitter, or read him in the Spring Fevers, The Fall: Tales of the Apocalypse, and Summer's Edge anthologies.

Does It Really Take a Village to Write a Novel?

by Cat Woods

Think about that person in your life:

• The one who encourages his dawg to use your lawn as a canine commode.
• The one who leans on you to buy the Mother's Day presents and Christmas presents and wedding gifts and Easter baskets and ...
• The one whose contribution to group projects is her name at the top of the page.
• The one who "reluctantly" allows his children to spend the night at your house, night after night after freakin' night and never returns the favor.

Yeah, that one. The neighbor, sister, co-worker or friend who proudly proclaims that all great accomplishments in life take the work of a village.

Sometimes I think "village" is code word for "I'm lazy" and the people who say it are nothing more than the village idiots.

Yet, my writer-ego believes the opposite. It tells me that writers succeed because of the village, not in spite of it.

Five Awesome Reasons to Be Part of a Writing Village

1. It's dark and lonely in the writing closet—at least mine was. Any agents or editors living there before didn't leave a calling card ...
2. It's impossible to critique your own writing. No joke. I don't care how good you are, everyone needs an extra set of eyes on their work.
3. Networking, baby. It's hard to network effectively at a table for one.
4. You have to find the answers somewhere from somebody, so why not from other, experienced scribes?
5. Friendship. Pure and simple.

Five Awesome Gifts to Give your Fellow Villagers

1. Time.
2. Effort.
3. Honesty.
4. Expertise.
5. Friendship.

Five Awesome Writing Villages

1. AgentQuery Connect: Hands down, the best on the net. AQC boasts a robust writing community. It's free. It's fun. It's filled with advice on any topic. Did I mention it's the best on the net?
2. Society of Children's Writers and Illustrators: The SCBWI is all things juvenile when it comes to literature. When you join ($70/yr), you receive the inside scoop on the publishing business where kids are concerned. They host conferences, workshops, face-to-face critique groups and an online forum. I've been a member for eternity. But don't fret if you don't write for kids. Each genre has a professional organization dedicated to helping writers connect with the business and other like-minded scribes. Examples include: RWA and HNS.
3. Verla Kay's Blue Boards: Another juvie lit community that strives to provide a safe haven for writers penning scripts from board books to YA novels. The Blue Boards are free, but membership must be requested and accepted before you're given the magic key to the kingdom.
4. NaNoWriMo: I know, it sounds weird, but I met some of my dearest and oldest writing friends during the month-long novel-writing frenzy. We then created a tiny village in the vast ocean of cyberspace on LiveJournal. This group of wonderful ladies got me out of the writing closet and into the writing world. National Novel Writing Month happens every November. It's completely free and totally off the wall. Nothing motivates me to write like my fellow NaNoers.
5. Private writing groups: These micro-villages can go a long way in keeping us motivated while supporting our entire journey from start to finish. Often, you can find/create these groups after connecting with other writers on bigger writing sites. AQC, for instance, has a Want Ads section where writers can advertise.

Five Pitfalls to Avoid in your Writing Village

1. Never get more than you give. It torques people off and makes them want to burn down your house.
2. Never let your ego get in your way. Remember those village idiots I talked about earlier? Yeah, don't be one of them. As writers, we all have one end goal: getting our work published and into readers' hands. None of us are better or worse than our neighbor, no matter how much experience we have on our sides.
3. Don't build a wall. China's is crumbling, Berlin's is gone. Writing communities are places to explore and unite, not isolate and divide.
4. Don't be a jack of all trades. Writing communities are notorious for having so many fun alleys and shops that you want to get involved in the goings-on of them all. This is a huge time suck and doesn't really connect you the way you need to be. Instead, find a few niche areas that you can effectively and efficiently partake in and spend the rest of your time writing.
   
5. Whatever you do, don't poop on your neighbor's lawn.

Which writing villages are you part of? What is the biggest asset of your favorite writing village? The biggest drawback? How has your writing village played a role in your success as a writer, no matter how small or how great your feat? What tips do you have for writers as they embark on a journey to find a solid writing community?

Curious minds want to know.

Cat Woods used to be a village of one. After her closet door opened, she jumped key board first into a wide range of diverse and intriguing writing communites. You can follow her journey on Words from the Woods.