Drabblecast is holding Women Writing About Aliens month and has decided to air my story, “What Fluffy Knew,” as part of the celebration.  ”What Fluffy Knew” has been reprinted a few times, but has never been in audio before.  You can listen here. And visit Drabblecast for more stories here.

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Continuing Education (Networking Part Two)

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

It’s interesting for me to write the Guide as I have.  In two more posts, I will have been writing this for a year.  However, I haven’t spent the entire year on it.  I’ve written two novels while doing the Guide and a number of short stories, as well as other pieces of nonfiction.

As I mentioned last week, I’m writing these networking posts while Dean and I are conducting a writing workshop.  Technically, I’m not conducting much.  I spoke on the first night, and I’ve been there for several meals.  Dean’s done 99% of the work, as he does on a number of these workshops.

But I do a lot of networking while they’re going on.  The writers who come to our workshops are mostly professionals, so they have contacts and ties and various things happening in their careers.  For this workshop, Denise Little of Tekno Books kindly joins us, and she brings her unique perspective, not just to the workshops, but also to the casual discussions.

Dean will tell you, with disgust, that most of my conversations at these things revolve around books, television, movies, and cats.  Not books that people are working on—books we’ve read.  (I’d talk politics, but we learned long ago to ban that topic from our workshops, along with religion.)  He’s right: my tables at the dinners usually focus on peripheral things. But mixed with those important discussions of cat health and the latest hot TV show are tidbits about writing, writers, business, and professionalism.

If we only discussed writing and writing-related business, we’d get bored with each other pretty quickly.  The fact that we do talk about other things slowly builds friendships and friendships are an important part of networking.

I know some of you are wondering how long this workshop is going on. After all, I mentioned it in last week’s post. By the time you read this, the workshop will have ended days before.  But I’ll be referring to it this week and next as if it were still on-going, because, from my perspective it is.

I’m writing the next two posts during the workshop because I’m about to dive into another novel.  Unlike the previous two, this one has already informed me (yes, novels talk to their creators—or at least, my novels talk to me) that it wants to be the only thing I write.  Apparently, my subconscious knows I need to focus—and focus hard—on this book to do it right.

I’ve learned, over the years, to listen to that. Rather than get annoyed at the Guide, I’m going to write ahead.  I’m teaching another workshop in March, and won’t have time to write fiction then.  So I’ll write another batch of posts during that full week.

I’m telling you this partly to show process (because some of you have said you were interested) and partly so that you’ll know why my references seem so screwy in the next few weeks.   Or perhaps I should say, screwier than usual…

Rather than title these posts “Part One,” “Part Two,” and “Part Three,” as I have in the past, I’m going to give them actual titles, and then include the part number in parenthesis, as I did above. The reason for this is that the various forms of networking are vastly different, and I can see that some sections will have subheadings of subheadings.

(Can I get more baroque?  Um, well, yes….)

Anyway, I’m starting with continuing education because that’s what’s happening around here this week.  We’re teaching continuing education classes for professional writers.  We’re doing one as I write this (or rather, Dean and Denise are) and we’ll do another in March. (On marketing.  Here’s the link.)

Dean and I often say to writers that money should flow to the writer, except for continuing education.  In that area, the writer needs to spend money to expand her horizons.  I think that’s true of most professions, although I’m not entirely certain.  I know that some professions require an annual fee to remain current—dues of some kind—and others require an annual fee plus proof of continuing education (certain medical professions, for example [and thank heavens for that!]).

The reason we have to tell writers that money should flow to them and not away from them is that in writing (and I suspect many of the arts professions), scam artists have learned that the practitioners know little about business.  It’s easy to convince a young professional writer or a wannabe to spend money on something that the writer should either get for free or should be paid for.

For more on that subject, see Dean’s Killing The Sacred Cows of Publishing posts and the other writing posts on his website.

Suffice to say, though, that the professional should continually update her knowledge in one way or another—whether it’s at formal classes provided through the bar association or through a continuing education track at a university, or whether it’s in the form of workshops or seminars, or whether it’s just through trade magazine subscriptions and related books on the subject.  The professional who does not continually educate herself in the changes in her profession gets left behind.

There is no set rule of thumb on continuing education.  Some states mandate the amount of continuing education some professionals receive to maintain their license.  (For example, the forensic psychologist I worked for had to have [I believe] fifteen hours of continuing education over two years to maintain his license.  Minor, in the scheme of things.)  Most professions have no such requirement—and freelancers often don’t.

As I mentioned above, some continuing education comes in the form of books, trade journals, websites—all things you can consume at home or during off hours at work.

The main topic here, however, is networking.  Continuing education provides countless opportunities for networking.  Sometimes the networking comes through the instructor himself—his resume, and his track record for success through his programs.  Sometimes (often) the networking comes through the other professionals at the seminar.  People trade business cards, make contacts, and discuss business in the line for coffee during the break, over lunch, and in the elevator on the way to meetings.  I’ve made a lot of contacts that way, some of whom I’d forgotten by the time I get home, and some who have become lifelong friends.

(A tip: when you receive a business card from someone at a conference or seminar, write a note about your conversation on the back of the card.  You’ll be glad you did. By the time you get home, you will have 10-20 business cards, and no real way to remember who is who if you don’t make notes.  I learned that one through hard experience.)

First, let’s talk about how you evaluate a continuing education program outside the home.

1. Figure out where the holes are in your knowledge base and find a way to fill them.  What don’t you know or what don’t you know well?  That part’s pretty self-explanatory.  Let’s assume you need a better way to do bookkeeping in your business, but you don’t want to hire a bookkeeper. (Or you have hired a bookkeeper, and then you read the section on employees here in the Guide, and realize you really should supervise that person. Which means you should understand what he’s doing.)

You’ve never kept books for any business, and the computer programs you can download seem unbelievably complex.  You have no idea whether you need double-entry bookkeeping or what even the “accrual” bookkeeping method is.

You need to ask yourself: Can you learn this on your own or do you need guidance?

Some things are relatively easy to learn on your own. But some things require assistance.  What those “things” are vary from person to person.  Only you can answer the above questions.  You also are the only one who knows if you can go to the weekend seminar on bookkeeping sponsored by the local chamber of commerce (we had one such seminar in our tiny resort town just last week) or if you need a full-on course at the local community college.

If you need the course, take it.  You’ll probably find yourself with other professionals—or maybe budding accountants who might become good bookkeepers when you’re ready to hire a few years from now.

The seminar at the local chamber might serve you better, however, and you’ll get to know the other business people in your area.  You’ll gain contacts as well as knowledge.

2. Do a cost-benefit analysis.  Two factors should go into your analysis of cost: time and money.  Let’s take money first, because that’s the most obvious part of a cost-benefit analysis.  First, what will it cost you not to learn the information?  Will it harm your business financially?

Obviously, not knowing how to keep the books for your business will hurt you in the long run.  So you need to learn how to do it.  Let’s assume that a weekend seminar in your hometown costs $50 (including lunch), a bookkeeping course at the community college costs $250, and the best bookkeeping software with tutorial costs $100.  (I’m making these numbers up.)

Clearly, the seminar is the cheapest.  But will it give you the most bang for the buck? Will you have to buy software anyway? If so, your cost just went up at least another $50.  (The recommended software without the tutorial.)  What will you gain from the seminar that you won’t gain from the software itself?

The answer used to be pretty simple: You used to be on your own with software, and a seminar would give you people to consult. But now, with websites and FAQs and help lines, you might get the information help you need to understand the software—or not.

If you’re mathematically challenged, you might be better off in the class.  (I’m not suggesting the class because you’re mathematically challenged and don’t understand that $250 is more than $50—if that’s your issue, you shouldn’t be in business at all.)  But if you didn’t do well in math at school or you left before you had second-year Algebra or you cribbed your homework off the kid next to you and never really learned anything past basic arithmetic, then a class might be the best thing for you.  The teacher will help you, step-by-step, because that’s what she gets paid for, and you’ll have months to learn something that has given you fits in the past.

The toughest part of the cost-benefit analysis is the time factor.  Some of us—particularly those of us who run our own businesses—simply don’t have the four hours per week for sixteen weeks that a course at a community college would require.  Some of us will have trouble carving a weekend out of our schedule for the seminar.  For some businesses, like that retail store I discussed last week, weekends are the busiest time of the week.  If you don’t have an employee to cover for you, you can’t go.

But will you spend more time struggling to learn the computer software in an unfamiliar discipline?  Are you willing to take that risk?  You have to answer that as you make these choices.

Fortunately, none of these choices are life or death.  If you try the software first and it doesn’t work, you can go to the weekend seminar.  If you’re more confused after the seminar than you were with the software, then you might have to take a class.  Of course, all of this will lose you time and money—you’re now at $400 plus the weekend plus the sixteen weeks of class plus the time you lost trying to figure out the damn software.

Sometimes the cheapest route turns out to be the most expensive.  Sometimes the shortcut you take to save time doesn’t save any time at all—and may even cost you more time than you ever bargained for.

3. Evaluate the seminar/class/workshop/conference.  Who are the instructors?  Are they well respected in their fields? Are they people you can learn from?

And here’s the biggie: Are they people you want to learn from?

I learned about the differences between instructors in my twenties.  I have said, ever since I can remember, that my goal in life was to be a professional writer.  I defined professional—even as a kid—as someone who made her living from writing.

Early on, I believed that you could not make a living as a fiction writer, so I went into journalism. That belief was a faulty one—fiction writers can and do make a living, and can, in fact, make a much better living than journalists (particularly nowadays).

Even though I was a history major in college, I took creative writing courses, and felt vaguely dissatisfied throughout without knowing why.  I graduated, mailed out my fiction, and developed a relationship with Ellen Datlow at Omni Magazine.  She apparently felt as frustrated as I did at my inability to break into her magazine, so she sent me the information on Clarion Writers Workshop, which was then held at Michigan State University for six weeks over the summer.

I applied; I got in; I attended.  I learned more in six weeks than I ever learned in my college creative writing courses.  Of course, I was learning from published professionals (not all of whom were earning a living, but I didn’t know that at the time).  I grew and developed as a writer, and within six months of my return had sold my first professional short story.

But I was still a journalist, and one nice thing about being a reporter is that you can ask a question, and then get paid to seek the answers.  So I asked why did I learn more at Clarion than I did in my prestigious university’s writing courses.  I interviewed the director of Clarion, and I interviewed the director of creative writing at the university—and learned something startling, something that made me, young firebrand that I was, furious.

I asked both directors the same set of questions.  What I remember asking was a do-you-beat-your-wife question of the university creative writing director—why isn’t your program turning out professional writers?  What I really asked him—I was a diplomatic little thing—was for a list of the writers who had gone through his program who made a living at writing.

He said they didn’t keep those records.

I asked why.

He said because that’s not the point of the program.

Feeling a bit stunned, I asked, if you’re not trying to create professional writers, what are you trying to do?

He said that they were trying to get as many of their students into qualified MFA programs in creative writing.

Okay, I said, but then what? Don’t you know who graduated and became a professional writer?

He explained to me, as if I was stupid which I guess I was, that the point of an MFA in creative writing was not to become a professional writer, but to go on to get a doctorate in writing, so that the student could then become a professor of creative writing at a prestigious university.  He had the figures on that success rate, if I wanted to see it.

I don’t remember if I did or did not.  I did want to fall off my chair.  I was furious—at him, and at myself.  No one had told me the goal of the university’s creative writing program before.  Of course, I hadn’t asked either.  I had wasted years—literally years—of my education, being taught by instructors whose goal for me was different than my own.

Of course I learned more at Clarion, which was designed to help young writers become professional.  I had finally found the right classes and the right instructors.

Not that there is anything wrong with becoming a professor.  I come from a family filled with them.  I’m one of the few people in my family who does not have an advanced degree in something or other.

But I never wanted to be a professor.  I wanted to be a professional writer.  And I had gone to the wrong instructors at the wrong school who proceeded—innocently enough—to teach me the wrong trade.

It took me years to realize that the mistake had not been theirs.  It had been mine.  (Even though I was raised by a professor who repeatedly said as I was growing up that no one should go to college to learn a trade.  I guess that cluestick continually missed me.)

Now when I want to learn something from someone else, I research their credentials first and foremost.  I would have told the young me to skip the MFAs and the PhDs even if those professors had earned those degrees at top-ranking universities (which many of my instructors had).  I would have told the young me to go to science fiction conventions and writers conferences and attend panels/workshops run by writers who were making a documented living at their profession.  By documented, I mean that they had a bibliography—works in print, that I could find and read and evaluate.

I still attend seminars.  I often go to writers conferences as an instructor so that I can sit in on panels by other professional writers and learn from them.  Dean and I spoke at the Space Coast Writers Conference a few years ago because of the roster of guests and because we wanted to visit Cape Canaveral, which we did.  The added bonus of that writer’s conference? The attendees, many of whom worked at NASA during the glory years of the moon landings.  Boy, did I learn a lot. Boy, did I enjoy myself. Boy, did I make connections.

Other things to evaluate:  Will you get time with the instructors? Will you learn from the other attendees? Will you have incidental costs—hotel rooms, plane fare, meals—or will a seminar/class in your hometown do just as well for you?

4. List your reasons for attending.  Some freelancers become conference/workshop junkies.  I’ll discuss this phenomenon in full in a later post, but make sure you’re not going “because everyone else is” or “because you don’t want to miss anything.”

It’s perfectly fine to go to a conference because you need to get out of your routine—all of us, particularly those of us who work at home, do that on occasion—but make sure you’re not doing that too much.  (And realize there might be cheaper ways to break your routine than flying across country for a conference.)

5. Plan your continuing education year.  Use your calendar and figure out how many hours you can devote to outside learning—conferences, classes, seminars.  Do this before looking at the conference listings for your profession.  Then stick to that timeline.  One year Dean and I made the mistake of traveling 26 weekends (out of 52).  That hurt our business and it hurt us.  We had reasons for each conference we attended (and no, friends and former students, the reasons weren’t just “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”), but those reasons were not enough to justify that much time away from our businesses.

There’s a reason that the professions which require a certain number of hours of continuing education require those hours over a two or three year period.  To require the hours in one year makes it hard for the working professional to meet the requirements and make a living.  Remember that as you set up your timeline.

6. Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone.  If you do attend a conference/workshop/seminar, make sure you do more than go to panels and sit quietly in the back.  Meet the other attendees.  Go to meals.  Go to the pre-banquet happy hour.  Talk to people.  Exchange contact information.   You can and will learn from the attendees.

It always stuns me that a small handful of writers attend our classes and never come out of their rooms.  They do the homework, do the writing, and do the reading, but they don’t meet their fellow attendees. Those fellow attendees may go on to be bestselling or award-winning writers, well-known editors or influential publishers.  All of those things have happened to our past students.  You never know which contact will prove valuable in the future.

Dean and I use the workshops as well.  The reason I’m writing the Freelancer’s Guide on my blog is because of contacts I made at a workshop nearly twenty years ago.  Michael Totten and Scott William Carter came to a workshop Dean and I were running every week in Eugene, Oregon.  Michael and Scott were college students then.  They’ve gone on to become professional writers who know a lot about computers.

When Dean and I decided we needed to know more about websites, blogs, and internet business, we asked to meet Scott and Michael in a nearby city. We bought them dinner, and for four hours, they told us what we needed to know to start.  We have been talking to them off and on for an entire year, sharing information and learning.

Learning we would never have made if we had dismissed them as just college students and wannabe writers all those years ago.

When you go to a seminar, be professional. Dress well. Be polite. But talk to people.  And more importantly, listen to them.  You’ll be surprised what you learn.

Continuing education is a very important part of your business.  Without it, you will stagnate and your business will stop growing. But don’t let education overwhelm your business.  Remember why you’re doing this and make each educational project work for you.

Next week, I’ll deal with groups—from support groups to professional organizations, the original point of the query from Carolyn Nicita that started this thread.

In the future, I’ll deal with social media.  Please let me know how you’re networking effectively online. The more information I get from the readers, the more I can share.  You can reach me here.

One thing Michael Totten told me when I started this project was that people would donate if they felt they got value from something they read online.  Many of you have helped him prove his point to me over and over again.  I appreciate that.  I’ve added the donate button below.  If you can’t donate, please forward news of the Freelancer’s Guide to freelancers you know—and to listserves with freelancers on them.  Networking, you know.  Thanks, y’all.

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: Continuing Education (Networking Part Two)” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

January, 2010

Bruen, Ken, The Guards, St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2001.  Let me just say, “Oh, my.”  I had no idea you could write like this and get published.  The Guards is a prose poem of darkness, with a character that I—the daughter of two alcoholics—should hate, and I don’t hate him even though he drinks his way through the entire novel, and makes all the mistakes that an alcoholic makes.  Set in Ireland and very very dark, very well written, unforgettable.  One of the best novels I’ve read in years.  Seriously.  Buy it, read it, but not before bed.

Cantrell, Rebecca, A Trace of Smoke, Forge, 2009.  One of the best first novels I’ve read in years.  One of the best novels I’ve read in years, quite honestly. Set in 1931 Berlin, A Trace of Smoke follows Hannah Vogel as she tries to find out why her brother was murdered. That her brother was gay and part of Berlin’s night club scene makes her work all the more difficult.  She manages to show the bone-shaking poverty of the time, along with the menace of the political situation.  The rise of the Nazis, and the involvement of some famous Nazis makes this story all the more hair-raising.

But the book is unputdownable because of one character, Anton, about whom I’m going to say little without spoiling the read.  From his first line of dialogue to the very end of the novel, Anton kept me reading.  Wonderful job. Evocative novel.  Set aside several hours because you’ll read it in one sitting.

Carlin, Peter Ames, Paul McCartney: A Life, Touchstone, 2009.  Paul McCartney was my first crush, back before my age had two digits in it.  I must’ve been four when I first became aware of the man.  I thought him marvelous then, and I still like him even now, which is more than I can say for any other childhood or teenage crush.  I don’t think I find him sexy so much as intriguingly creative.  Talk about surviving a long-time career, and still going strong.

Carlin’s book is very, very well written, and very thin.  He did do his interviews with the side players and did all of his research, but obviously didn’t interview McCartney.  The book skips over things in an odd fashion—like John Lennon’s murder. Carlin assumes we all know how Lennon died.  I’m not sure a 20-something who ended up liking Beatles: Rock Band will know.  Still, I couldn’t put this down—and much of that was the sentence-by-sentence writing (and the subject matter, of course).

Gates, David Edgerly, “Skin and Bones,” Between The Dark And The Daylight And 27 More Of The Best Crime & Mystery Stories of The Year, edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, Tyrus, 2009.  I have no idea how I missed this excellent story when it first appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  It’s a marvelous hardboiled novella that got nominated for the Edgar award (deservedly so), set in 1949 New York. The language is right, the feel is right, the town is right—and it reads like a novel.  It’s as deep and rich as anything else you’ll read this year.  Highly Recommended.

Gorman, Ed and Greenberg, Martin H., editors, Between The Dark And The Daylight And 27 More Of The Best Crime & Mystery Stories of The Year, Tyrus, 2009.  I love this volume every year, and every year, I only recommend a few stories from it.  Partly that’s because I’ve already recommended some of the stories (like Doug Allyn’s “Pig Party”) and partly it’s because the quality of this volume is so consistently good that stories which would normally stand out are part of a piece here.  This best of the year volume always has more of the award-winning and nominated stories than its competitor, and is probably more representative of the short mystery field.  The only thing I really would like to improve the volume is the kind of analysis that Gardner Dozois and Ellen Datlow do in their best of the year volume.  (The Jon L. Breen overview is nice, but not enough.) Pick this up.  It’s good.

James, P.D., Talking About Detective Fiction, Knopf, 2009.  This little book was a joy to read.  From the dust jacket to the paperstock to the inky smell of the pages, the actual book itself was a pleasure to hold.  The subject matter is one I love, and the writer herself is one of my very favorites.

She doesn’t disappoint.  This little book on detective fiction focuses mostly on the British tradition (which makes sense, since P.D. James is a British writer), but the analysis is cogent and thought-provoking. She takes aim at a few other critics of mystery fiction, always remembering that the important thing about fiction is its ability to tell a story.  Her insights into her own work are great, but my favorite part of the book is her discussion of the American hardboiled tradition versus the British drawing room mystery, both of which were being developed at the same time.

I’ve never seen the two traditions analyzed as a product of their time before (the late 1920s and early 1930s).  I learned a lot reading this little book and I enjoyed the experience of holding it.  What more can you want?

Kinsale, Laura, Lessons in French, Sourcebooks, January, 2010.  Ah, Laura Kinsale is back and all is right with the world. Seriously, does anyone else get depressed when one of their favorite writers doesn’t put out a book for a few years?   Kinsale hit some personal setbacks in her writing (she alludes to them in her Author’s Note), and they made her stop publishing books for a while.  I, for one, missed her tremendously.

Kinsale wrote one of my favorite novels ever, Flowers from the Storm, which is not your classic romance novel.  It’s better. It’s better than most novels in any genre.  Is Lessons in French that good? No, of course not, but Kinsale hit it out of the park with Flowers.  I don’t ask my favorite writers to hit a homerun each time at bat, but I do want them to hit the ball.  And to extend the already overwrought metaphor, Lessons in French is at least a double, maybe a triple.

Wonderful characters, great situations, lots of humor without being a funny book, lots of tension—and a bull named Hubert who becomes very important to the plot.  This book lives and breathes adventure and fun and warmth and…oh, I read it too fast.  Please, is there another Kinsale novel on the horizon? Please?

And, last week, I got interviewed for the nifty podcast site, StarShipSofa. Check out the excerpt here. The entire interview will be posted soon.  Check out the entire website here.

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Networking Part One

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Sometimes the topics that I’ve overlooked in my single-minded attempt at finishing this Guide astound me.  If I had written a proposal for the Guide before I actually completed the manuscript, I would have estimated the Guide’s length at 70,000 words, and I would have covered a few of the topics herein.  At the moment I’m at 130,000 words and counting, with six more topics of my own to cover.

As you can tell from that opening paragraph, this week’s topic is one I hadn’t thought of.  I should have thought of it; I discuss networking with my writing students all the time.  In fact, I network each and every day.  But I hadn’t considered it a stand-alone topic for the Guide, even though I mention networking in many of the posts.

Writer Carolyn Nicita e-mailed me with the idea, only she labeled the topic “Support Groups and Professional Organizations.”  She also gave me a list of such organizations and groups, as well as subjects to discuss—which I greatly appreciate.  Her list is comprehensive and helpful, and made it clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to cover this in one single Guide post.

Why did I chose “Networking” as my topic instead of “Support Groups”?  Because networking has become extremely important to modern business in a variety of ways, from the support groups and professional organizations that Carolyn mentioned to seminars and continuing education to becoming active on social media and the web.

If you’ve found a particular type of networking to be helpful or harmful to your freelance business, please e-mail me this week.  I’ll work your comments into the next few installments of the Guide.  (And if it’s okay to quote you, please tell me, along with any website address that I can link to.)

“Networking,” by the way, is a very modern term.  As I started this post, I grabbed the dictionaries around my desk and looked through them for the word “networking.”  I didn’t expect to find that word in the Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Fifth Edition) that my grandparents bought my father the year he entered college (1936)—and of course, I didn’t find it in there.  I did find “network,” however, which had three definitions: a fabric or structure of cords or threads that cross each other at certain intervals and are secured in their crossing with knots, etc; Any system of lines that interlace like a net; and—the dictionary is very specific here—in radio terminology, a chain of stations.

Meaning that network used to define broadcast media was very new in 1936.  Of course it would be.  I hadn’t thought about that much.  Then I picked up my college dictionary, the Macmillan Contemporary Dictionary from 1979.  I expected to find “networking” in there, but it wasn’t there at all.  Instead, I found the first reference to people:  “interconnected organization or system—‘a network of spies.’”  I also found that they’d added to the radio definition (of course), by including television and by defining how those networks interlinked—through coaxial cables.

By the mid-1980s—Webster’s New World Dictionary, for those of you keeping track—nothing had changed.  I expected networking by then as well, but I was early.  After all, the desktop computer had just arrived into American homes.  I got my first in those years.

If I hefted my butt out of my chair and high-tailed it upstairs to the computer with my internet connection—on a DSL line, thank you, which these old dictionaries had never heard of—I could tell you to the year when “networking” became a noun.  Probably in the mid-1990s.  It appears in the dictionary built into the rather ancient computer that I write on—a 2005 iMac.  The Encarta World English Dictionary has six definitions of network—and the second is all about people.  (“A large and widely distributed group of people or things such as shops, colleges, or churches, that communicate with one another and work together as a unit or system.”)  The 2005 definition also includes computers—of course—and “telecommunications” systems designed to exchange information.

So the definition of network has grown in the past 75 years.  As that definition grew, we added the new term “networking.”  Encarta’s definitions clearly show that the word came from computing.  The first definition—“the linking of computers so that uses can exchange information…”—shows the word’s history and most important usage (at least to the people who wrote the dictionary).

The second definition is the one that applies to us:  “The building up or maintaining of informal relationships, especially with people whose friendship could bring advantages such as job or business opportunities.”  (Emphasis mine.)

Why do I always start these long, interconnected (networked?) posts with dictionary definitions? Because words tell us a great deal about ourselves.  Words that exist in English but don’t exist in, say, Russian show us the difference between the cultures.

And words that have come into use or whose usage has changed within a single generation tell us about our culture.

I’m sure people networked in 1936.  I’m sure they called it something else.  (And, by the way, none of my dictionaries use “network” as a verb.  When did that happen?  Since 2005?)  I’m equally sure that the networking that occurred in 1936 was not on the same scale that people network on today.    The opportunities simply weren’t there.  People had relationships within their communities, but the chance to network with people from all over the country, let alone all over the world, belonged only to a few.

If you read about the early history of broadcasting—one of my favorite topics, actually—you learn that the live radio broadcasts that our grandparents remember from World War II came about because of a change in technology, and a small group of reporters who all knew each other.  They got thrown onto the air because there was no one else, not because they were particularly good at it.

Early networks often work that way.  Only a handful of people might have the skills to do a particular job, but those people might not be known to each other.  So friends hire friends and then offer on-the-job training.  It’s human nature.

Last night, on The Late, Late Show With Craig Ferguson, Ferguson held a fascinating hour-long Tom Snyderish interview with British actor Stephen Fry.  In the middle of that wide-ranging discussion, they talked about Twitter.  Ferguson just joined Twitter; Fry was an early adopter who talked about the early days of Twitter.

In the beginning, Twitter grew by word of mouth—friends verbally told friends about it.  Broadcasters started discussing it when celebrities started having “races” to increase the number of people following them, but the culture didn’t take Twitter seriously until the Iranian elections last summer.  Iran closed its borders to outside journalists and censored broadcasts that left the country, but didn’t shut down its cell phone networks—at least not right away.  Real live news, from regular people, filtered through Twitter onto the net, and then out into the world.

A network that most people had initially seen as frivolous and a joke had suddenly gained international importance—and for many people, particularly those in Iran, life-or-death importance.

The world has become very small and the networks very large.  My Facebook friends include people from Russia, Germany, France, Spain, South Korea, and Colombia, as well as Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States.  Have I met all of these people face-to-face? No.  But I have met most of them either through my website or their website or Twitter.  I’ve done business with quite a few of them, even though we’ve never spoken on the telephone and we’re on different parts of the globe.  I’ve read their work; they’ve read mine.  We actually communicate in ways unthinkable as recently as fifteen years ago.

And I’m benefiting a great deal from the networks that have come about via the internet.  I’ve sold short stories because of Twitter, novels because of Facebook.  I’ve worked with movie production companies through e-mail and done broadcast interviews via Skype.  I’ve been in touch with bookstores in Australia that carry my work and done online interviews for their websites.  I’ve gone to conventions overseas because the organizers can reach me via my website, and I’ve been paid for overseas publications through PayPal, so I don’t have to go through the rigmarole that banks require on any check received in another currency.

Networks are important, not just in established businesses like mine, but also in growing businesses.  The woman we sold our collectibles store to in 2008 had a bumpy first winter, not just because it was the middle of the Great Recession, but also because she relied on the old-fashioned way to do business—word-of-mouth in our small tourist town.

She had repeat business from tourists who had come through the year before, and she had business from some local ads, but not enough to sustain her through our slow times.  She was good at money management, and she had low expenses, so she made it through, but she learned quickly that she needed to do more.

Dean had taught her how to put collectibles on eBay, but she hadn’t wanted to do the work.  Not because she was work-averse—she isn’t; she’s a very hard worker—but because she wasn’t that comfortable with computers.

Still, a hard winter will convince anyone to make a few changes.  So she put a few items on eBay, and then a few more, and then even more.  Slowly, she has formed an online network of people all over the world who are interested in the items she puts up for sale, from toy trains to cookie jars.  She’s known for quick service and quality products, and she’s making it through this winter just fine.

The network of local shop owners helped her as well, answering her online questions, and forming a group that shared the cost of local advertising.  She has a network of suppliers that she’s established, people who comb junk shops and garage sales for that one special item.  Her networks are helping her grow her business.

But there’s a downside to networks as well. They can be time-consuming, and they can be destructive.  Carolyn’s points, from her e-mail, concern support groups and professional organizations, but they can apply to all networks in one way or another.

She mentions these:

•How to know when you need a group

•How to know when you need to get out of a group you’re already in

•How to cope with infighting and sabotage in your group

•Legal and financial ramifications

•Opportunities

•Resource-sharing

•How to know if you’re a groupaholic

•Goal and dream sharing

I’m also going to deal with two personality types:

•The master networker who has no work to stand on

•The excellent craftsperson who can’t network to save her life

There are a lot of other topics as well, which I know I will touch on as I get deeper into this subject.

I’m going to structure networking into a variety of components.

First, I’ll deal with in-person networks:  support groups, professional organizations, seminars, conferences, and continuing education.  I’ll deal with the upsides—the interaction, the contacts—and the downsides.

Then, I’ll deal with social media networks.  I’d like help with this one from readers if I can get it.  I’m active on Facebook and Twitter, as well as here on my own blog.  I also belong to some listserves, many of which have existed for a decade or more.  I have a Linked-In account, but I don’t make the best use of it. And as someone reminded me on my Facebook page just the other day, I need to tend to my page on Goodreads.com (a page I didn’t start; someone else did).  I’m sure that there are other social media networks I know nothing about and which might be helpful to freelancers reading the Guide. So use the contact button here on the site and send me an e-mail.

(She writes, hoping that her network of readers will come through.)

Finally, I’ll deal with peripheral networks—networks that get built without you even realizing you’re doing so.  The store owner above had no idea she was building a network of train collectors when she started selling toy trains on eBay.  Now she’s linked to several of those collectors all over the world.

I know many of you have found this blog not because you’re fans of my fiction but because of all the business networks out there.  I’m familiar with the online writing community, although not with all of the branches of that community—and there are countless branches, in every single city in this country (and in other countries as well).  But I’m not as familiar with the networks for realtors, even though I know a number of realtors follow this Guide, or the networks for musicians, or the networks for computer consultants.  I’m sure those networks are as vast as the networks for writers.

Because of the Guide, I have built some peripheral networks—inadvertently.  And if I need help with real estate questions or computer difficulties, I actually have some people I can turn to outside of my friends and acquaintances.  I’m also building some non-fiction business relationships due to the Guide, and gaining contacts throughout the non-fiction online community.

That’s an unexpected bonus of this Guide, certainly not one I planned on.  I’ll be discussing those peripheral networks last.  Again, if you have any insights, do let me know.

Interestingly, I’m going from this writing session into a weekend’s worth of networking.  Dean and I are holding a workshop this weekend with the help of Denise Little of Tekno Books.  More than 30 professional writers from all over the world will be at this workshop.  I’m involved in a minor way—a session on Thursday night, and then I’ll join the group for several meals.  Most of the writers will be together from Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon—a great way to make contacts, help each other, and to get to know each other.

These opportunities can be difficult and tiring, particularly for writers, who are an introverted bunch. But they can also be invigorating and uplifting, a chance to move forward in unexpected ways.

I’m sure the weekend will provide more insights for the Guide. Weekends like this one often do.

Yet even with the workshop, I wouldn’t have thought of this topic without Carolyn.  So there is something else you think I need to discuss, please e-mail that as well.

Because of the network of Guide readers, this Guide is much stronger than it would have been had I just written it in the silence of my own office.  I appreciate the support from everyone who has e-mailed, commented, or donated.  You’ve kept me going on the Guide, which is still growing, despite my best efforts to wrap it up.  People who donate will get an e-version of the Guide.  When I do publish a hard copy version, it cannot be a single book, since I’m already at 130,000 words and counting.  So in addition to writing the Guide, I’m figuring out how best to present it in permanent form.  I’ll let you all know when I have that figured out.  Thanks for everything!

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: Networking Part One” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

On May 1, Golden Gryphon is releasing my latest short story collection, Recovering Apollo 8 and Other Stories.  The collection features all of my award-winning and best-of science fiction/fantasy stories from the last five years or so.  None of these stories have been in previous collections, and some are very hard to find.  It also has a stunning Bob Eggleton cover.  Bob and I are happy to be working together again.  He was the artist on my very first cover story, “Sing,” in Aboriginal SF Magazine–and, it turns out, that was his first cover painting ever.

You can preorder here or directly from the publisher here.

One of my own personal favorites–”The Disappearance of Wicked”–appears in the March/April edition of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  I think I like this story because I needed a writer’s office cat, so I inserted my own. The Goddess, as she appears in this story, was as she appeared in life–forever biting the hand that fed her, threatening the raccoons, and being her usual tough self.  She was still alive when I wrote the story, but died last May at an advanced age–at least 15, probably much older. (We’d had her 12 years, and the vet said she was at least 3.  But she had a gray muzzle and old lady habits even then, so she was probably 10.)  Anyway, there are other things in the story–children, dogs, kidnappings.  But I won’t give it all away.  Find your copy here, and enjoy!

Artwork donated by Pati Nagle.

The Freelancer’s Survival Guide: Goals and Dreams

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Last week, I discussed the two kinds of business plans—the kind you draw up for a financial reason (such as trying to get a loan or to lure investors), and the kind you draw up for yourself.  If you haven’t read this post, I suggest you do so, not just because it will help you understand this post, but because it will help you with your business.

In that post, I mentioned that I’d be discussing the differences between goals and dreams this week.  It actually surprises me that I haven’t done so sooner.

As I said when I started the Guide, I’m writing it out of order, partially in response to reader comments and partially in response to life itself.  As things happen around me, I put them in the Guide.  I gave myself the freedom to write out of order, even though I hadn’t initially planned to do so, because writing out of order is my normal writing method.

I rarely write anything in a linear fashion.

However, I usually finish whatever I write before I publish it.  So publishing the Guide in my normal out-of-order manner feels a bit odd to me.

At this point in the writing process, I’d go back to the first time I mentioned either “goals” or “dreams,” and I’d stick this post there.  Because it’s an important post.

I touch on goals and dreams in a lot of posts.  The post on failure, the posts on success, and the post on postponing your dreams, just to name a few.  But I never explained the difference between goals and dreams.

We use the words interchangeably. We achieve our goals, pursue our dreams.  We pursue our goals, achieve our dreams.  But goals and dreams are very different.  A shorthand way of thinking about this comes from football.

That weird little H-shaped thingie sticking out of the end zone?  It’s called a goalpost, not a dreampost.  I think football would be an entirely different game if it had a dreampost.  Hockey would be different too, if the players tried to get the puck past the dreamer.

In fact, the difference between a goalie and a dreamer are as illustrative as the difference between goalpost and dreampost.  As I go on here, playing with words, you’re starting to get an inkling of what I’m talking about.

Goals, simply put, are something you achieve.  My Encarta World English Dictionary gives me five definitions of “goal.”  Four are connected to sports, including number five, which is “the end of a race.” Number four is the only non-sports related definition of the word: “something that somebody wants to achieve.”

Achieve.  We achieve our goals.  Goals are an end product.  The other definitions include phrases like “a successful attempt at…” or “the score gained…”

There are no words like “successful” or “gained” in the definition of dream.  Nor does the definition of dream include the word “achieve.”

The same dictionary gives the noun “dream” six definitions, and most of them involve sleep or inattention or thoughts.  First, of course, the dictionary discusses those visions our mind serves up when we’re sleeping.  It also discusses the daydream.

The two definitions that concern us are the third and the fourth.  I’m going to start with the fourth: “an idea or hope that is impractical or unlikely to ever be realized.”   If that were the definition of goal, then every single sports team in the world would be in trouble.  (Of course, I’ve known a few football teams bad enough to make a win an impractical hope.)

The third definition is a little more upbeat: “Something that somebody hopes, longs, or is ambitious for, usually something difficult to attain or far removed from the present circumstances.”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. And since I try to be very practical in the Guide, and you all seem to recognize that, you probably think I’m going to tell you to abandon your dreams and set goals.

Nope.

Both dreams and goals are necessary for success.  You just have to understand the difference between them.

Deep down understand it.

I don’t think a freelancer can survive long without a dream.  I think the more impossible the dream the better.  See those posts on success.  If you don’t set that impossible dream high enough, you’ll achieve your dream, and stop striving.

When students apply for the Master Class that Dean and I teach (along with four other established professional writers), we ask those students what their goals are and what their secret, most impossible dream is.  The only students we take for the Master Class are those with either a professional career that has stalled (for some reason) or those with a strong work ethic who are having trouble breaking into publishing (and have excellent, professional level skills).

We look at the goals and the secret dream more than any other part of the application.  Because if the goals and the secret dream are non-existent, we have learned that the writers often don’t have the capability to survive the Master Class, let alone the business of writing itself.

What does an impossible dream add to a career?  Purpose.  Plain and simple. That dream is like the shining city on a hill, the one you can see in the distance, and you might never reach.  But until your dying day, you’ll head for that hill.

The other thing that the impossible dream adds is a sense of hope.  As long as you have something grand to strive for, you also have something grand to hope for.  Hope gets us through the dark times better than anything else.

When hope disappears, so too does drive.

Which is why it’s so hard to succeed on a long-term level if you have easily achieved dreams.  If you lack that one huge impossible dream. Because you might reach that city on the hill within the first few years of your professional career.  And then what will you do?  What will you hope for?  What will you daydream about?

I think the daydream part is also essential.  You need something to entertain your imagination while you’re working day to day.  If you’re an actor, you might spend time every day studying fancy gowns for your trip down the red carpet for your tenth Oscar nomination.  Not your first, not your fifth, your tenth.  Your impossible dream might be to have more Oscar nominations than Meryl Streep.

But if your impossible dream as an actor is to have a small part in a film—well, you might achieve that dream the day you sign up as an extra in a large crowd scene. That’s a dream you can attain in my tiny town on the Oregon Coast.  Dozens of movies have filmed here since I’ve lived here, and lots of locals have had their mugs on the screen, if only for a few seconds.  A few of the locals actually had small speaking parts.  Heck, my husband’s best friend—an attorney—had a speaking role in a commercial, filmed in Idaho.  Because of that thirty seconds on the nation’s television screens, our attorney friend is one of Idaho’s members in the Screen Actors Guild.

Had his lifelong dream been to become an actor—someone who qualified for the Screen Actors Guild—then he did so in a single outing with a single commercial. But if his lifelong dream had been to become a famous star of stage and screen, someone who had not just an Oscar, but an Emmy and a Tony, someone who had a lead role on Broadway, as well as starring roles in hit movies or hit TV shows—well, then he has a long, long way to go.

See the difference?  Even those things I listed above might not be enough for that impossible dream.  An actor might want to be considered the greatest actor of his generation.  A writer might want to have the bestselling book of all time.  A store owner might want to create the largest store franchise in the world.

And because these are dreams, not goals, it’s okay to noodle on them, to see them as a shining light in the distance, as something to work toward, but not something to count on.

Goals, on the other hand, are stepping stones.  Goals must be achievable.  Goals should build on each other.

Go back to the football analogy.  A football game in which a score is just a dream would be the dullest thing on the planet.  In fact, football players wouldn’t even have to face off. They could sit on the field, if they wanted, and imagine the score.  Of course, no one would come to the game—because there wouldn’t be a game.  Just a dream of a game.

But football is a game of inches.  It is built on phrases like “first and goal.”  The game itself sets up tiny goals that lead to a touchdown. And if the team fails in one tiny goal, then the ball goes to the other team, which then tries to achieve a series of small goals to get to the larger one.

The dream for football players isn’t to win one game.  A lot of players achieve that as early as the age of eight or ten, in a Pee-Wee Football League.  Or they have the game-winning run (or the game-winning pass) as early as the first game of their high school career.

The dream for football players is to play in the Super Bowl.  Or to win the Super Bowl. Or to be the Super Bowl’s Most Valuable Player—not once, but several times throughout their career.

That’s a dream that can’t be achieved without a lot of goals—small and large.  From getting on the varsity team in high school, to playing well enough to stay, to winning game after game, to play in college, to play well enough to get drafted into the National Football League, to play in the NFL (not sit on the bench), to be a part of a very good team, to win games inch by inch, yard by yard, year-in-year-out, to win a division, and to go to the big game, and then, to win it.  More than once.  Not-so-tiny goals, all leading to the big dream.

Not every professional football player makes the playoffs.  A professional football player can have a successful—a highly successful—career without ever once playing in the Super Bowl.  But if that player retires before he gets the chance to play in the biggest game of all, he will know he never did quite achieve his dream.  (I think this is why so many players try to become coaches.  They might not get to the big game as a player, but they want to try as a coach.)

A goal is “something somebody wants to achieve.”  It’s “the end of a race.”  Goals, in some ways, are the opposite of dreams.  If you set your goals too high, you’ll get discouraged and quit.  If you set your dreams too low, you’ll get discouraged and quit.

So how to do you set goals? You start with easily achievable ones.  The best diet programs are set up this way.  They don’t put you on a starvation diet of 800 calories per day.  If you’ve been eating 4,000 calories per day, the diet will reduce your intake to 3500 calories per day.  Most people can easily cut 500 calories from their diet.  That’s one giant soda or one huge specialty coffee drink or one piece of pie with ice cream. As time goes on, the calorie count goes down incrementally.  And the dieter achieves other goals—losing a pound here, fitting into her “skinny” jeans for the first time in years, getting compliments from friends on how good she looks.

However, you can’t stop with the small goals.  When you achieve a goal, another needs to take its place.  Each goal should be  a little more difficult than the last.  It’s like running a marathon:  No one can walk out the front door and run 26.2 miles without training.  No one, not even the best athletes in the world.

Most people have to walk before they run, and some people can’t even walk an entire block without getting winded.  Yet within two years, they’re able to run 26.2 miles.  They didn’t increase their distance every day.  They walked for a block until they weren’t winded. Then they walked for two. Then three.  Eventually, they walked for a few blocks and ran for 100 feet.  And on and on.

The other key to following goals is to write them down.  First you need to write down what the goal is. Then you need to keep a log, one that records your struggles to achieve that goal.  You will fail.  Be honest about those failures. Then get back up and try again, until you achieve the goal.

Sometimes the failures tell you that the early goals are too hard.  If so, cut the effort in half, and try again.

The other thing you need is a timetable.  Give yourself a realistic amount of time to achieve a goal.  Once that goal is achieved, have the next goal ready to go, along with its timetable.  This is why I tell you to have daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals.

Throw in five-year and ten-year goals as well.

Then, revamp them often.  Preferably on a monthly basis.  As you strive to achieve those goals, you will learn what is realistic for you.  No excuses.  You need to be one hundred percent honest about what you’re trying to do.

If you’re an underachiever, pay attention to how hard you work.  Make sure you’re putting in some real effort and not just slacking off.

If you’re an overachiever, make sure you don’t work too hard.

That last piece of advice comes from me, the woman who now runs about fifteen miles per week. When I started out, I didn’t pay attention to my limits (yes, overachiever), and I achieved…a stress fracture in my foot. Which would have only been a sore foot if I hadn’t been so focused on trying to keep up to the impossible goals I had set myself.  It would have become a permanently damaged foot if my husband, the former professional athlete, hadn’t had a long talk with me about knowing my own limitations (and who also dragged me to the doctor).

It’s hard to find a balance between working too hard on your goals and not working hard enough.  Which is why I tell you to reassess often.  And to be honest with yourself.  Because you’re the only who is going to know if you’re trying too hard or not trying hard enough.

The goals are stepping stones to that impossible dream. They’re the trail through the murk that will lead you to the city on the hill.

They’re also the reality check. Because the farther you get down the road, the more you should reassess.  You might not want to go to that city on the hill.  You might want to jettison your impossible dream because it’s not something you want to do any longer.

If that’s the case, then you need to find a new dream, or you will stop striving.

I know, I know, I’m speaking in metaphor here.  Let me be concrete.  One of my early impossible writing goals was to have a career like that of Nora Roberts.  But the deeper I got into the writing profession, the more I realized that Nora Roberts and I are very different writers.  I would love to have that many bestsellers and all the perks that go with it.

But Nora, for the most part, has stayed within the same genre.  She writes all aspects of that genre—romantic suspense, paranormal romance, contemporary romance, even science fiction mystery romance.  But the books all center on a couple, either falling in love or striving to maintain their love.

I have a hummingbird brain.  I can’t even read one genre for longer than a week. Asking me to write in one genre for the rest of my life would actually be a hardship.

As soon as I realized that, I had to look for a new impossible dream. Which was harder than it sounds.  Not many writers write in more than one genre.  I had to refine the dream to be something that suited me.  I’ve refined several times since then.  I still have impossible dreams—but none of them entail writing in the same genre book after book after book.

I reassessed.

If I had wanted a career similar to Nora Roberts’s career, I would have had to change my goals. I would have had to write novels in only one genre (although I could’ve branched into all the subgenres), and I would have had to have had small goals along the way—writing a contemporary, writing a paranormal (oh, I’ve done that), writing a romantic suspense novel (I’ve done that too!), writing a historical….

You get the picture.  My imagination is too dark to sustain a happily ever after ending book after book.  My sense of whimsy is too powerful to write dark novels book after book.  My mind sees too many future possibilities to keep me out of science fiction for too long.  But I love to dig deeply into the modern world as well.

I’m not suited for the first city on the hill that I headed toward.  However, I’ve found others that suit me better.

If you think of goals as markers along the way toward your impossible dream, then you’ve got the right philosophy.  If you confuse goals with dreams, then you’re going to get stuck.

Imagine something grand for yourself.

Then figure out how to achieve it.  If achieving it takes only hard work—if there isn’t a little bit of luck and timing involved—then you haven’t found your impossible dream yet. Because an impossible dream should have an element of the impossible to it.  An element of being in the right place at the right time.

Know too, that you might never achieve that dream—and that’s okay. Because you’re going to be disappointed when you get to that city.  It’ll never ever measure up to your imagination.  So as you’re on the final road toward your dream, make sure there’s a new one waiting in the wings.

And then plan those stepping stones that will get you to your next city on the hill.  Set your goals.

Goals are the only thing that will lead to your dream.  All of your dreams.

Even those that might never come true.

I never dreamed I’d enjoy writing nonfiction again.  But I am.  And my weekly posts are little goals, which enable me to finish something I’d hoped to write for years.

I’ve appreciated all the help you’ve given me on this journey.  The comments, e-mails, and discussions are great. The donations help me take the time to write the Guide.  And remember, anyone who donates will get an e-version of the Guide when I’m done.

If there are topics I’ve missed, do let me know.  I can see the finish line on this project—the goal, if you will.  So if I’m missing anything, now is the time to let me know.

And thanks for everything.

“Freelancer Writer’s Survival Guide: Goals and Dreams” copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.