A Writer’s Guide to Building a Support System
Part 2: Partner up
by Beth Mende Conny
The content of this article may be forwarded in full without special permission, provided it is used for nonprofit purposes and full attribution and copyright notice are given. For other purposes, contact Beth Mende Conny at Beth@WriteDirections.com.
Attribution: © 2002-2012 Beth Mende Conny. Beth Mende Conny is the founder of WriteDirections.com and the author of more than four dozen books and collections.
In Part 1 of this article, I outlined how to identify the cheerleaders in your life — the precious few people who can help support you and thereby your writing.
Here, I’d like to share a personal experience of an actual support system. Read, learn and replicate.
My story begins a number of years back, outside of my daughter’s daycare center. Another mom approached me and said: “I hear you’re a writer. Do you want to partner?”
It turned out, she was a landscape painter new in town and fairly new to selling her work, and she wanted to find another creative-type to spur her on and vice versa. To partner would be to form a working relationship, she said. That meant committing to meeting regularly to set goals, report in and hold ourselves accountable. Perfect timing, I thought. I was a part-time reporter who wanted to transition to books. I was taking baby steps and needed to pick up the pace.
Here’s the format we came up with and it worked brilliantly:
— We met every other week, alternating homes.
— Our meetings lasted two hours.
— We each got an hour of that time, alternating who went first.
— Our respective one-hour slots were divided into two 30-minute slots.
— During the first 30-minute slot, we, respectively, reported on what we had (or hadn’t) accomplished. We allowed ourselves to complain and make excuses, discuss fears and blocks, and share personal issues, especially as they affected our creative output (e.g., the 10 days spent caring for a child with chicken pox).
— During our second 30-minute slot, we opened the floor to discussion. We helped each other set or reframe goals, brainstorm and strategize, consider the pros and cons of particular projects and contracts, etc. As importantly, we ended our slots with a commitment: “I will do X, Y and/or Z by the next time we meet.”
If all of the above sounds too formal, know that it wasn’t; however, it was structured, which is why it worked. Over two years’ of meetings, we both made great strides. She was selling her art in galleries and was also doing commissioned paintings. I published my first book and was at work on my second.
Could we have accomplished these things on our own? I’d like to think so. But the fact is that we did it together. Our partnership worked because we made each other work.
A postscript:
Two years after we met, I moved out of state. Although my partner and I kept in touch initially, our work and lives followed their own trajectories. She’s still painting, however, and I’m still writing. Our partnership lives on.
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Beth Mende Conny is the founder and president of WriteDirections.com. She has published more than four dozen books and collections, and helps individuals and businesses bring their projects to publication. She can be contacted at Beth@WriteDirections.com.