Hold Onto Your (Writer) Friends in Dark Times
October 2024: Revision Reflections
In case you haven't heard, there's an election coming up.
Sigh.
There's much to be said by wiser people than me about the stakes involved this cycle, though it seems obvious (to me, at least) that we face a stark choice as a nation between turning our backs on the past nine years of chaos, hatred, cruelty, and lies—or taking a running leap into that abyss.
But this is not a political newsletter (although if you've read any of our books, it should be pretty obvious where the R(ev)ise and Shine! team falls on the political spectrum). Rather, I want to talk about the necessity of holding on tight to your writer friends, now, as we walk through the shadow of darkness together.
Contrary to popular belief, writing is not a solitary endeavor. It takes a village to write a book, and a small city to build a sustainable writing career. Your writer friends are your most enthusiastic cheerleaders when times are good, and they will stand beside you holding your hand when they’re not.
Though your family and loved ones may be supportive, they don’t always understand what it’s like to be a writer wrestling with that weird combination of crippling insecurity, exhaustive tenacity, worst-case-scenario catastrophizing, and delusional magical thinking that constitute the borderline-disordered psyches of most of us. They also have no idea how to parse and dissect the rich variety of coded micro-aggressions, embarrassing pettiness, and outright hostility we regularly experience when interacting with the wider publishing ecosystem.
Your writer friends show you how much they love you by saying the nastiest things about your critics and antagonizers. When you experience those fallow periods in your work when nothing seems to go right and you’re ready to throw in the towel, it’s your writer friends who will lift you up and remind you what you love most about writing. And when you achieve even your humblest of goals—the kind of thing that gets a bemused shrug from most people—your writer friends are there rejoicing in sincere satisfaction right alongside you.
Sometimes they even offer more than just moral support.
For example, I probably wouldn't even be writing anymore if it weren't for my dear friend, Nicole Valentine, who, all the way back in 2014, asked me to join her as a teaching assistant in the Whole Novel Workshop at the Highlights Foundation. It was a particularly stagnant period in my writing life, when things were not going well for me at all. I wasn't writing, I certainly wasn't publishing, and yet I was watching from the sidelines as many of my friends and classmates from my MFA program were signing with agents and launching their own careers. Becoming a part of the Whole Novel Workshop that year—and remaining a part of it ever since—offered me the community and support I needed to keep writing, just when I needed them the most.
Years later, I would have never dared to try my hand at editing We Mostly Come Out At Night: 15 Queer Takes of Monsters, Angels & Other Creatures if it weren’t for my friend Nora Shalaway Carpenter. As a contributor to Nora's anthology, Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America, I was so inspired by her work on that project that it stirred my own dreams of becoming an anthologist someday. But it was more than just an example that Nora provided. She also gave me tons of practical advice on how to write a proposal that would appeal to publishers, how to choose contributors, how to collaborate with an acquiring editor, and how to organize a production schedule. She even showed me how to prepare for a launch and promote an anthology.
Finally, if it weren’t for my friend Michael Thomas Ford recommending me to his own editor—who then sought out my short fiction online, liked what he read, and reached out to me to ask if I wanted to publish a collection—I probably wouldn’t have debuted earlier this year with my short story collection, The Dancing Bears: Queer Fables for the End Times.
These are just a handful of the many gifts of opportunity my writer friends have given to me over the years. In return, I’ve tried to share similar gifts with them and with other writers. That’s what we writers should always do for each other. Publishing is NOT a zero sum game, although it can feel like it sometimes. Your success does not take away from mine—nor mine, yours. We need to stick together and look out for each other, because trust me, nobody else in publishing is looking out for us.
Moreover, the very best way I’ve found to sustain the joy and love of writing over the long haul is to share it with other people.
In fact, that was our not-so-secret agenda for the R(ev)ise and Shine! Residency. While we may have pitched it as a fun and informative retreat aimed at helping writers improve their craft, what it was really all about was creating a safe space for a new writing community to form. One that would be there for our students long after the Residency was over, when they needed the help, support, and encouragement of fellow writers, as well as a team of cheerleaders to celebrate the victories, large and small, that come with the writing life. We hoped that our students would leave not merely with a plan for their revision, but with a whole new group of friends to sustain them on their writing journey—and I think we succeeded.
(By the way, next year's Residency is scheduled to return to the Highlights Foundation on May 21-25, 2025. Be sure to save the date!)
The point here is that, ultimately, no matter how many books you publish and no matter how much success you enjoy in your writing career, I believe you will find nothing more precious and rewarding than the other writers you meet along the way.
So, no matter what happens on November 5th, please keep your writer friends close.
Hopefully, we are poised as a nation to turn the page to a brighter and more optimistic chapter in our history. But if we are not—if instead we do indeed plunge into an abyss of bigotry, lies, oppression, and dystopia—we are going to need to hold onto each other like we've never held on before.
In community (now, more than ever),
Rob
PS: Vote!!!!!
Announcements:
It All Starts With Structure: Finding the Perfect Framework for Your Picture Book w/ Pat Zietlow Miller
We’re delighted to announce our first picture book-focused Zoomie, featuring special guest Pat Zietlow Miller!
Workshop description:
There are SO MANY ways to structure a picture book. And, choosing the right one is as important to your story’s success as choosing the right design when you’re building a house. Award-winning picture book author Pat Zietlow Miller will share common picture book structures, tons of book recommendations and tips for making your structure sing.
When: Wednesday, October 23, 2024 from 7:00 to 8:30 pm ET
Where: Online
Cost: $30*
*For those who can’t attend live, a recording of each session will be made available for 30 days after the event for all ticket holders.
Click the image below to find out more and sign up:
Pat Zietlow Miller knew she wanted to be a writer ever since her seventh-grade English teacher read her paper about square-dancing skirts out loud in class and said: "This is the first time anything a student has written has given me chills." (Thanks, Mrs. Mueller! You rock!)
Pat started out as a newspaper reporter and wrote about everything from dartball and deer-hunting to diets and decoupage. Then, she joined an insurance company and edited its newsletter and magazine.
Now, she writes insurance information by day and children's books by night. Her first picture book, SOPHIE'S SQUASH, illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf was released in 2013 from Schwartz & Wade. It won the Golden Kite Award for picture book text from the SCBWI and was named a Charlotte Zolotow and an Ezra Jack Keats New Author honor book
Her second picture book, WHEREVER YOU GO, illustrated by Eliza Wheeler, was released by Little, Brown in 2015. That was followed by SHARING THE BREAD, illustrated by Jill McElmurry (Schwartz & Wade); THE QUICKEST KID IN CLARKSVILLE, illustrated by Frank Morrison (Chronicle) and SOPHIE'S SQUASH GO TO SCHOOL, illustrated by Anne Wilsdorf (Schwartz & Wade).
In 2018, New York Times bestselling BE KIND, illustrated by Jen Hill (Roaring Brook), WIDE-AWAKE BEAR illustrated by Jean Kim (HarperCollins) and LORETTA'S GIFT, illustrated by Alea Marley (Little Bee) were published. REMARKABLY YOU, illustrated by Patrice Barton (HarperCollins) and WHEN YOU ARE BRAVE, illustrated by Eliza Wheeler (Little, Brown) were published in 2019, and MY BROTHER, THE DUCK, illustrated by Daniel Wiseman (Chronicle) came out in 2020.
Pat has one wonderful husband, two delightful daughters and two pampered cats. She doesn't watch much TV, but she does love "Chopped." Pat lives in Madison, Wisconsin.
You can follow Pat on Twitter (@PatZMiller) or Instagram (@patzmill). You can also visit her website at www.patzietlowmiller.com or stop by www.picturebookbuilders.com, a blog she's part of.
Voice-a-Rama in Novels with Editor Karen Boss
Do a deep dive into voice in MG and YA novels in this interactive 90-minute workshop with Karen Boss, Senior Editor at Charlesbridge Publishing.
Workshop description:
Everyone talks ad nauseam about voice. For good reason! Books with strong voice resonate with readers and inspire young people and sell well. So how do you find the best voice for any given project? What if it’s hard? Let’s look at author voice versus character voice, and do exercises to explore how to strengthen both as you plot your middle-grade or YA novel.
When: Wednesday, November 13, 2024 from 7:00 to 8:30 pm ET
Where: Online
Cost: $30*
*For those who can’t attend live, a recording of each session will be made available for 30 days after the event for all ticket holders.
Click the image below to find out more and sign up
Karen Boss is a senior editor at Charlesbridge where she works on fiction and nonfiction picture books and MG and YA novels and nonfiction. She holds an MA in Children's Literature from Simmons College. She published Traci Sorell's award-winning debut, We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga, and has worked with authors such as Jane Yolen, Sarah Albee, Tami Charles, and Valerie Bolling.
Love you, Rob! Thank you for this post and our community.
"Your writer friends show you how much they love you by saying the nastiest things about your critics and antagonizers." 🤣This is so true! Love my writing friends.💜