Support systems

One of the things 4th Street Fantasy Con did this year was a workshop on writers’ support systems, which I participated in. I did a lot of thinking about the topic, and it occurred to me that most of my blog readers probably weren’t there and could use the information (and besides, it means I have another three days before I have to come up with another blog topic). So here’s the quick summary version of what I had to say.

Everybody needs support systems. There’s simply too much to do for any one person to be able to take care of all of it, all the time. Most of the writers I know think of their support systems in terms of their friends and families, and pretty much take whatever comes, but I think there are more effective ways of looking at it.

First off, there are multiple levels of support systems, and they exist on both professional and non-professional, formal and informal areas. Too many people don’t look at their whole support system, or they look at various pieces of it in isolation; as a result, they don’t get maximum benefit from whatever they’ve put together.

The other thing to remember is that no one piece of any support system is absolutely necessary in all cases. For instance, most authors consider an agent essential, but there are still some who handle their own contracts and negotiations. Nobody I know of does it all, but everyone I know has a different subset of the possible support network. In other words, you have to build your support system according to what you, personally, need other people to help you do.

The most obvious component of a writing support system is the professional one. By this I mean the group of paid professionals who handle various aspects of the writer’s business; editor, agent, accountant, publicist, lawyer, webmaster/tech support, and personal assistant being the obvious possibilities. Some, like the editor, are usually paid by the publisher and can change without notice; others, like the writer’s agent and accountant, are people the writer has to hire for him/herself. Hardly anyone I know has all these people working for them, though nearly all have the first three. One or two have substituted “lawyer + personal expertise” for “agent.” There are noticeably more writers who’ve hired a personal publicist these days than there were when I was starting out, but I don’t think it’s to the point yet where a majority of lead writers have them, let alone the folks who’re still in the midlist.

A key consideration for paid professional support is, of course, how much a writer can afford. Another is what the writer’s personal skills and interests are like. I know several writers who love doing self-promotion (and who are very good at it), but who would never even consider doing their own contract negotiations; I also know writers who would far rather pay a publicist than an agent. It depends on what one is good at.

Paid professionals are obviously part of a writer’s formal support system, but writers often have a lot of unpaid support that I’d call formal but not professional (at least, not professional in quite the same sense). I’d put critique groups in this class; they come in varying degrees of formality, but it is rare (in my experience) for a group to be composed of professional critics, or even teachers. Writers’ organizations like SFWA and the Author’s Guild also go here (yes, they’re made up of professional writers, largely, but the members don’t join in order to write; they join to find out what’s going on in publishing and maybe do some lobbying or put pressure on publishers to give writers a better deal…and most members aren’t professional lobbyists or lawyers), and maybe things like workshops or writer’s retreats.

Then there’s the informal support system, which is what most people think of first when I bring up this subject. These are the friends who volunteer to help figure out what’s wrong with the computer software, who willingly provide in-depth knowledge of Russian sleigh construction or Babylonian history or the development of hieroglyphics, who cat-sit, who drag the writer out on sanity breaks, who offer rides when the writer’s car breaks down, and who listen patiently to endless complaints about insensitive editors and unperceptive readers. These are the family members who take an extra turn making dinner or doing laundry or running household errands when the writer is working against deadline.

But there is also an informal support system composed of one’s fellow writers. This is the classic “networking” beloved of big corporations and career counselors. Among professional writers, it is sometimes very difficult to distinguish from gossip. These are the people you call when you are faced with some professional task you have never done before, like giving a speech or putting on a writing workshop, and you are desperate for someone to tell you what to expect. They’re the people you ask when you get an out-of-the-blue proposal from a publisher or other company you’ve never heard of before, for something your agent won’t handle, and you want to know whether it’s legitimate and/or a good idea. They’re the folks you take out to dinner when you’re having trouble with first-person viewpoint or with the plot twist in Chapter 13, and you need a new-but-well-informed alternate perspective.

The informal support systems, professional or not, generally work on a reciprocal basis: you feed my cats when I’m out of town, and I’ll mow your lawn when you go on vacation next month. You listen to me whinge about viewpoint, and I’ll listen to your complaints about plot. You give me advice about hiring an agent or running a panel at a convention, and I’ll tell you about the nifty new service the library just started or give you a referral to the tax accountant I just found. It isn’t quite that tit-for-tat, of course; sometimes I’ll have to rely very heavily on my informal support without giving much back, while other times I’ll be the one helping everyone else out without much in the way of return. Over the years, it averages out…and if it doesn’t, the folks who take, demand, or expect support without ever giving anything back eventually discover that their informal support system has withered away.