Every Writer Needs the Right Connections

According to Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, there are three basic types of people: Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. I believe each of us have characteristics of each of these types. If you don't have these characteristics, then you can learn and acquire them as a writer. In this article, I want to emphasize the importance of connections and talk about how you get connections in the first place.

For writers to succeed and get published, they need to send the right material at the right time to the right place and the right person.  You are searching for a champion to communicate with you and guide you to that right place. Admittedly you have to take action to find this place and experience some mis-steps and rejection in the process. The persistent search for the right connection is a key part of the writing life.

Whether you've been in publishing for many years or are just getting started you have connections. For each relationship, you need to collect information and preserve this information in a format which you can use. For example, I have an email list and for each email, it includes my mailing address and phone along with my email address. The information makes me easy to reach. A week ago, when I spoke at a writer's group, I brought business cards and made sure each person who attended, got one of my cards to reach me if needed.

As a writer you want to exchange information with others and carefully put this information where you can easily access it. I put much of it into my iPhone because the contact information is backed up automatically and preserved. I also collect it through my email account and online address book. I do not use the information carelessly—i.e. calling people and wasting time chatting on the phone.  I call or email when important to reach the other person—admittedly a judgement call on your part.

Last weekend, one of the websites that I use went down for the first time. The website is a critical piece in a teleseminar event. This particular site collects the questions from the participants in a teleseminar. I've been using this site for years and it has never gone down—until this weekend. I tried sending email messages for help to their support address and anything else that I could think of to reach the site. The bill that I get each month had a phone number attached to it—so I called that phone number—yet it was no longer a valid number.I was stuck. My event was stalled because of this missing piece. No one could register for the event because the site was down. What else could I do? As typical, this situation happened on the weekend and not during the week.

I recalled that the owner of this site was good friends with another one of my contacts. For this particular contact, I had his cell number in my phone. I sent a short text to this friend about the situation and asked if he knew how to reach the owner. It turns out this friend was in North Carolina in a mastermind meeting with the owner of the downed website. 

Since they were in a face to face meeting, they were away fro m their email and computers. Because I reached them, the owner immediately looked into his down website and in a short amount of time it was back up and running. My event can go forward since everything is working now.In fact, if you want to hear the event (which is now on replay), you can have immediate access to it—just follow this link.

I'm certain there were many others who were stuck with this down website. Yet through my contacts, I was able to creatively reach the right person and get it resolved. There are several action points from this story:

1. Always be working on increasing your connections with different types of people.

2. Keep their information in a format that you can easily access—on your phone or on your computer. I'm using tools which are internet based and can be accessed any place. If it only on a printed business card, then that information doesn't help you away from your office. You want the information in a format you can access any many different situations.

Last week I met with one of my new authors at Morgan James Publishing. He was in Colorado since his son was in a hockey tournament. Even though on the weekend, I drove up to his hotel and we spent some time together, talked and exchanged business cards.  As a writer, you always need to be working on your connections and relationships. You never know when a particular relationship will be important to you.
  
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Writers Need Connections. Here's Tips on How to Get Them & Keep Them. (ClickToTweet)
 

Change is Hard. You Go First.

We are creatures of habit and like to keep doing the same things over and over. It's how I operate and assume you do as well. Yet the world around us continues to change and if we want to succeed as writers, we need to change with it. The weather changes all the time and is outside of our control yet we change what we wear and other details to keep up with these changes.

My iPhone will often have apps that need to be updated. Other times the entire operating system will be updated and many of the standard programs suddenly look different and have different features. Change is all around us and involves taking some calculated risks and experimentation and always learning new things. It's not easy for any of us but it's a part of our world and culture. As I've mentioned in these entries in the past, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. If you want a different result, you need to make some changes.

As writers and publishing professionals, we spend a lot of time sitting in front of our computer. Over the last few years, I had not been exercising and eating the wrong things. My weight ballooned and my waist size grew.  About a year ago, I decided to change my eating habits—in particular carbs and sugar. Yes I was exercising several times a week but it was not the exercise which made a difference in my weight. It was my change in eating habits. I went from a size 46 waist to 38 and people could see a difference in my appearance. It was not easy to change my eating habits and is a constant struggle but the results have been amazing. This week I went to the doctor for a physical. I'm supposed to do this every year but had not done it for several years and hasn't even been to see my doctor since August 2014. They pulled my medical chart and noticed a substantial difference in my weight—in fact, I was down 38 pounds from my previous visit.

As we approach the end of 2016 and look toward 2017, it's a good time to take a few minutes and reflect on your publishing life. Are you selling enough books or magazine articles? Are you pitching the editors on a regular basis and looking for new opportunities? If you aren't satisfied with the current results, what changes can you make to have different results in the days ahead?

Is there a new training program that you need to go through like my Write A Book Proposal course or even creating your own course and selling it? I encourage you to get my Simple Membership System (which is a complete self-contained training package) and create your own training program. Or can you plan to attend a writer's conference in 2017 to meet some new editors and publishing professionals?

You do not have to remain in a rut or in the same place next year as you are today. You can change and move forward. As I said in the title of this piece, change is hard. You go first. If I can help you, reach out to me and ask. My work contact information including my phone number is on the bottom of the second page. In the comments below,let me know about the changes you are planning for the days ahead. We are surrounded with all types of opportunities. Which one will you seize and move ahead?

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For everyone, change is hard. You go first. Here's some fresh ideas. (ClickToTweet)
 

Why Keep Up with the Technology

Maybe you are one of these writers who is focused on writing and the technology can spin around you and you aren't interested in keeping up. I know where you are coming from and I've been right there with you.

Last summer I met with a pastor of a large church. He picked a local restaurant which had gone out of business two days before our meeting. As I was walking up to the meeting, he told me, “I just sent you a text.” I had no idea where that text went because it did not reach me. I had a cell phone but did not text nor receive email on my phone. I did not have a smart phone.

I watch people enamored with the technology to the detriment of their writing life. When they are with people, instead of focusing on these people, they are reading their email or texting friends. I didn't want to be a part of that crowd. Also I've often found with email and texting, there is some value to not instantly responding but putting some thought into it. Some times a situation can be enflamed with an instant and thoughtless response. I was happy with my little plain cell phone.

I handled my email on my regular computer—not my phone and not on the road. I tend to get a lot of email (hundreds a day). Any time that I'm away from my computer for a length of time, things do begin to pile up and take several days to process. 

Last fall I did six conferences in seven weeks all over the U.S. I spent a great deal of time away from my computer and knew it would take more than a few hours to catch up if I didn't do something to change how I worked. I took the plunge and traded my simple cell phone for an iPhone 5. I've been learning to text and email and much more on my phone.

> I've had a huge learning curve with my phone. Each day gets better and I've seen the repeated value of making this switch. Several weeks ago I read that bestselling novelist Philip Roth had purchased an iPhone 5 and he was working through the instruction in the book iPhone 5 for Dummies.

While you might not like the Dummies series, I've found a number of these books to be insightful for learning. I got the book and have been working through the different chapters applying it to my phone and situation. While the phone has a lot of intuitive features, I have benefited from the detailed instructions.

This week I was speaking about my technology change with one of my writer friends and he told me about a songwriter friend who was writing with a well-known recording artist. This songwriter had a clunky old cell phone—nothing connected to the Internet or the ability to text. 

During his writing session, they created a song. He asked when they were going to head into the studio to make a demo of the new song. The well-known artist said, “Hang on. Let's record it now.” 

He pulled out his phone and started the recording application. They created an MP3 then he sent the phone off to a record executive. In a short amount of time, the executive responded and gave them a record deal.

The experience changed the song writer with the old cell phone. He updated his phone and began to use the new technology.

Admittedly you have to use wisdom with the technology. I still think twice and sometimes several times before I fire off a response. Also I work at not constantly checking my email or using my phone when I'm with my wife or other family members. Like any tool, you need to discover the right balance for you and your writing life.

What steps are you taking to update your technology and continue to grow as a writer and communicator?