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)