Support IRL and on line

This week I've been editing my non-fiction book and I've got to the part where I'm talking about getting support for your writing process.  I'm old enough to pre-date the Internet, so I can think back to the times when the only support a writer could get was face-to-face contact with people in real life.  I'm even old enough to pre-date email, so there was no easy way to get a quick answer to a query then.

Support in real life has its pros and cons.  If you can find the right group to join the support can be fantastic.  And there's always the possibility that you'll make a good friend who'll act as your writing buddy, or even, if you're lucky, as a beta reader for your work.

One of the cons about some groups is that you can't join them unless you've been offered a professional publishing contract.  England's Society of authors is like this.  This is also true of the Science Fiction Writers of America, the equivalent organisations for SF writers.

So that's one con of real-life groups.  Sometimes they won't let you join them as an unpublished author.  Another possible con of real-life groups is that there may be nobody working in your genre in the group, so they don't get your individual challenges.

This is where support on-line comes in.  There are some very generous authors and agents on social media who freely give of their time and share their experience of the publishing industry to mentor writers on-line.  Gareth L Powell regularly tweets "what can I help you with?".  His threads are full of questions from writers, which he gives good and considered advice on.  Joanne Harris regularly does a thread of #TenTweets in response to her follower's requests.

I may not be able to join the SFWA or Society of Authors as a full member, but I do have access to their websites, and both make a wealth of valuable information freely available to all there.  There are also sites like www.litrejections.com, which provides support and encouragement for rejected writers.  It also has agent databases which are searchable, a fabulous resource, for free.

Yesterday I went to a real-life group which started out as a book marketing group, but which has morphed into a writers' support group.  We were able to cheer up a newly-published author who was disheartened by reading her reviews.  Getting support in real life sometimes tops on-line contact, but a mixture of the two provides the best support a writer can find.

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