039: Building Your Writing Community (And Why It's So Important)
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Building your writing community (and why it’s so important)
Hello, hello, welcome to this week's episode, I have tried to record this episode about four times and my cats keep waking from their slumber and just running around this room every single time I press record, even though they've been sleeping all morning and totally quiet. It's the problem with sharing your office with two cats.
Anyways, hopefully this round will be successful, we're going to talk about building a writing community and why it's so important because it is super important. And when I say writing community, what I mean is just other writers in your life kind of like a network of writers, other people, you know, whether it's in person or on social media, that also right, that you can use for accountability for support to talk things through, maybe they can be a resource for you. This is just something that's really helpful for writers to have. Because writing is such a solitary activity. It's just you and your laptop or your computer or your notebook. Whatever you use to write with, obviously, it's just you sitting down and doing the thing. Unless you have a co writer or something, obviously. So it's even more important to build this community. And it's part of developing a writing life, right?
So I'm an introvert, I don't love being around people for more than a short period of time I get really drained. And I really have a hard time being around groups of people. So I just want to say that even if you are also an introvert, which I would love to see a study, I bet the writing community at large, like anyone who writes is just overwhelmingly introverted. But I know that there are extroverted writers, for sure I have I'm friends with some of them. I have clients who are extroverts. So I'm aware that that a lot of clients, a lot of writers are extroverted. But for those of us who are introverted, and have kind of a natural aversion to a term like community, or networking or anything like that, just remember that you, you get to control what this looks like, if this is you going to a big event and talking with a lot of new writers. Awesome. This can also be you just DMing with another writer on Instagram, or Tiktok or something, it doesn't have to be this draining thing where you're around tons of people. So please keep that in mind. Because I don't want to scare anyone off with this idea of a community where it's something that's draining and, you know, you're just surrounded by a group of people. So let's talk about where to find other writers that you can kind of connect with. First option is social media.
Obviously, I mentioned that already. I am most active active on Tik Tok. That's always what comes to mind for me and there's a huge writing community on Tik Tok. In last week's episode, we talked about beta reading and how to use social media to find beta readers. And I mentioned just searching hashtags on tiktok as an example of how to find beta readers or kind of get involved with that community. But it's the same thing for just connecting with other writers like this is something that I've kind of done naturally over the time that I've been on Tiktok I didn't set out to be like, Okay, let me let me find some writer friends, or let me you know, have some people that I can like, talk to about this thing. I just started engaging, like I would, you know, like videos or comment or follow people whose content I really liked. And that resonated with me. And that's it, that's kind of where it started. And you know, how tic tock is the more that you interact with someone, the better the algorithm kind of, or the more that the algorithm starts to show you their video so so I start to see the same people across my FYP anyways, but an example of why this was so helpful for me is I made a decision to leave my agent a couple of months ago, and I got the courage to do it in part because of another writer who had shared that they had just left their agent recently. And this was another writer who also hadn't, you know, sold a. published a book yet and was kind of in a similar spot to me, although this was her. I think it was her first book. I'm actually not totally sure it was her first book. But anyways, she had left her agent and I messaged her and I just was like, hey, I really appreciate you sharing about this on social media, it kind of gave me I don't know, some encouragement, I'm in a similar boat where I'm thinking about leaving my agent, and we just chatted about it. And she gave me some encouragement, I finally took the leap. And, you know, broke it off with my agent who I love and respect, by the way, it's nothing, you know, wasn't like she was bad person or anything. But um, and then, you know, we've been kind of cheering each other on in the querying process, just messaging each other with updates, because we're both back now queering, which is hard, very, very hard. And this is a kind of a thing, you know, querying, where it's really, really helpful to have some writer friends or writing community that can support you and provide encouragement because it's a long road, and it's a hard road. And even if you're not querying or planning to query ever, if you want to self publish, if you want to be an indie author, or if you want to do hybrid publishing, like whatever, it's still important to have, you know, writer friends, like someone that you could just reach out to.
And the next way to find a community of people, community of writers is to go to local events, which, again, I mentioned, the introvert extrovert thing, if you're an introvert, that might seem kind of scary to go to an event and just try to like, meet people organically. Never underestimate writers in your town or city, wherever you live. I'm talking about book signings, author events, writer meetups, critique groups, writing classes, anything like that, that's gonna get you in a room with people who write and people who are interested in storytelling. And obviously, with book signings, I mean, some people are there just because they like the author, and they like to read, they're not necessarily writers, but there's a big overlap with those things I've found. So yeah, just just see what's out there in your community where you can make connections with people. You know, something that I've started doing with a writer friend of mine is we'll meet up for coffee every month, or maybe a month or every two months, something like that. And we'll set aside some time before we just chat and catch up where we will write and we'll set you know, 30 minutes aside or something, both of us bring our laptops, we sit in the coffee shop and write for 30 minutes. And then after that, we just chat and catch up. And for me doing that is a lot more enjoyable. And, you know, I can even get some energy from that, as opposed to like, meeting up with a group of 10 other writers and like going out to dinner or something that can be kind of overwhelming.
If I don't know people, then my social anxiety kicks in a little bit. And I kind of get I can get, I don't know, I mean, I can do it. I do love being around writers more than other people. But it's still it's still a lot, I'm not grading groups, so you might be in a similar boat. So the third and final way, I'm going to share of how you can find a community of writers final for this episode. Obviously, there are a lot of other ways that you can find writers, this is not an exhaustive list for a 10 or 15 minute episode.
But the third way that I'm going to talk about in this episode is to join my membership. So if you are listening to this, that means that the blank page to book membership is officially open for enrollment. So July 26, through August 2, you get early bird pricing, to celebrate kind of launching this thing and putting it out into the world. And I want to tell you a little bit more about the community aspect of it in particular, because this is a place where you can go to meet other writers. So there's all kinds of stuff to support you in terms of your craft, there's going to be a live monthly training. There's a private podcast episode that comes out once a month. It's a q&a podcast where you can submit questions to me ahead of time, and I'll answer the questions and record a podcast episode to answer them. You get access to an online course that's called idea to book and it's all about how to go from just like developing an idea and brainstorming to all the way through writing the book, editing the book, and kind of a lot of the mindset stuff in between. And then you also get 2 drop in weekly writing sprints where you can join, it's on Zoom, it's 30 minutes, everyone's muted, and we just write and the times for those are going to be determined based on the member. So I'm going to pull everyone that joins and we'll figure out two times that work for people's hopefully if you do join, at least one of the times will work for you. But then the community aspect is there's going to be a Facebook group.
So this is a perfect place to connect with other writers. I want this to be a place where we can all celebrate when you make progress on something we can celebrate when you just finish a page that was really difficult for you to write we could celebrate when you get to the halfway point we can celebrate when you have an outline for your book we can celebrate when you get the rough draft done like all Have those important milestones along the way of writing a book, I want this to be a place where we can celebrate you, this is also going to be a great place to get accountability, you can post, if you're struggling with something, you just need kind of some encouragement, maybe some mindset stuff is coming up, you can post in the Facebook group. And this is not going to be me just, you know, providing my two cents all the time, like I really want this to be where you're getting insight and input from everyone in the membership, who's in that group. So you can kind of get a lot of different opinions and a lot of different, you know, points of view and a lot of different kinds of support, because that's, that's really what community should be, I don't want this to be the kind of thing where I'm just the head of it. And I'm facilitating all of these things. I really want this to be a community where people can make connections with other writers, independent of me, because that's, that's super important.
So again, if you are listening to this, before August 2, you can get access to six months of the membership for just $39 a month, I'm pricing this so low, because it's a new membership. And I'm really excited. And obviously, with everything I just talked about, there's a ton of value in this, and it's worth a lot more. So I am going to be raising the price after August 2nd to $59 a month. And the reason that it's a six month membership is because I'm really focused on this community aspect. I want writers who are, you know, kind of willing to do this for six months where they're willing to dive in and commit and make progress on their book. If you have access to a membership for one month, you know, that's fine. But you can't make complete progress on your book. And you know, you can't write a book in a month. Well, you can, that's not true. There are people that write a book in a month. But I really want this to be the kind of thing where you can be outlining your book, you can be starting to write your book, you can draft your book, you can edit your book, and this membership is going to be there to support you through that whole process. So that's why it is a six month membership. And then bonus, if you decide to renew after the end of that six months, and you've gotten the early bird pricing of $39 a month, you can renew for another six months, and you'll be able to keep that $39 A month price. So that's a huge benefit, because the price is going to be going up.
And this isn't like a fake urgency or scarcity thing. Like it's just this is kind of the early bird incentive price. And I would love to see you in there, I would love to see you take advantage of this. I'm going to include the link to the page with all of the information about this membership in the description of this episode. And you'll also see me talk about it a lot on social media, obviously. So if you follow me on Instagram, or Tiktok, or you're on my email list, you'll definitely hear about this membership. But yeah, I think it's going to be I think it's going to be a fantastic community. I'm really excited and just thinking about all the people that are going to join. And this is the kind of thing that I wish was in existence when I started writing, it really would have been beneficial for me. So alright. I think one final thing I want to say about a community of writers is just a little bit more about why it's so important. We know we've talked about this idea of writing in isolation and why it's, it's good to just get outside of that and kind of connect with other writers. But there's something about there's something about connecting with other writers that just always inspires me and always motivates me when I'm feeling kind of blah, about my writing, when I'm feeling kind of like myth about my work in progress, or I just really don't want to write if I connect with other writers.
Every single time I do I feel fired up about writing. Like I literally don't think there has been a time where I've talked to writers or talked about writing with someone. And then I haven't gotten to the end of that and been like, oh, yeah, I'm still not too excited about it. I'm always more inspired and excited to get back to my manuscript. So I think it's just such a an important thing that can provide some inspiration and some motivation, and also some accountability, especially for those of us who need some kind of external accountability to get us like to get our ass in the chair just to actually write. Yeah, and you just never know who's going to have a connection or who's going to know you know, a resource that they can point you in the direction of if you're struggling with something. You can get recommendations for things like I don't know cover designers or editors if you're going down the self publishing road. It's just a great way to kind of use the your network that way as well. I posted it Tik Tok recently where I was asking for recommendations for a cover designer. And y'all really came through there are a ton of good recommendations on there. And even some that are specific to genre, which is really cool. So I always love kind of crowdsourcing things on tiktok, particularly in that case, it was tiktok just to get right resources and recommendations.
So, all right, check out the information on the membership at the link in the description of this episode. And if you are listening to this after August 2, don't worry, you can still get access to the membership. You haven't lost your chance completely. But I really hope to see you there. And if you have any questions on if this is right for you, please reach out to me, you could send me a DM on AI on Instagram at the Katie Wolf. I'm very clear on who this is for and who this is not for. So I will be very honest with you. If I feel like this isn't the right fit and this is not going to be a good use of your time or your money. I'll definitely let you know. Alright, thanks for listening. I appreciate you. I'll see you next week.