The Importance of Befriending Your Competition

Hi readers and writerly friends!

Now that we’ve wrapped up everything to do with college (for now) we’ll be discussing competition and the importance of befriending your competitors. There’s a lot a new writer/editor can learn from seasoned professionals and there’s a lot of fresh perspective that rookies can bring to the table as well. Making connections in the bookish world has proven invaluable to me as both a writer and an editor. Keep reading if you’d like to see why its so important for new creatives to befriend their competition.

Monopoly car parked on the “GO TO JAIL” board spot. Photo by Suzy Hazelwood.

So, there you are, out in the wilderness of the publishing landscape you spot a competitor. You have three options. You either a) cower in fear, hoping they don’t see you, b) assert your awesomeness, hope they do see you and they cower in fear, or c) you outdo them in some way, therefore establishing creative dominance. It’s your turn, what do you do?

Okay, hold up. If you picked any of these answers, just stop. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. You lose.

You can learn from your competitors. If they aren’t being stingy with their knowledge, then most everyone you come across (whether or not you are in the publishing industry) would be willing to share some sort of advice. The #1 biggest misconception about competition in ANY industry is that competition is bad or that your competitors are inherently your enemies. This is simply just not true. There is so much you can learn from your competitors, and instead of treating them as your nemesis, consider befriending them for a mutually beneficial connection, and better use of your energy.

This awesome quote from John Barrows comes to mind:

“You can learn something new from everyone and every situation.”

 —John Barrows

He’s exactly right. This goes for people in and out of your respective industry. You can learn something new from every person you meet. You can learn something from your competition as well. Learn from them so you don’t have to make the same mistakes that they do. Follow in their footsteps and take notes on what works and what doesn’t. I’m not saying to copy anyone, but people who have been in the biz for years have tried and true formulas that guarantee results and you can use their established methods to get you ahead.

Additionally, your competitors are full of knowledge, resources, and tips and tricks. Of course, the mentors that come to mind are my colleagues, fellow writers, and the Developmental Editors Connection group on Facebook. Honestly, if I had a dollar for every time I went to them with a question, I’d not only have tons of incredible advice, but I’d also have enough money for double the cappuccinos each week. I can’t imagine all the times I might have gone wrong without their help. The same goes for a few of my writerly friends who started out as competition for me. I would know about a fraction of what I know now by ignoring the obvious opportunity to make a valuable connection with someone else in the industry. I’m eternally grateful for all of the editors and writers who have taken time to guide me—even in the smallest of ways such as quick questions about the CMOS or Microsoft Word issues.

You can collaborate with one another. Just imagine getting to work with your competition to create something amazing. How awesome would that be? There’s a reason YouTube collabs are so popular—it’s a group project that benefits everyone involved. And the same goes for industry collaborations. And often, by working together, you can trade information and produce double the content in half the time.

They can guest blog for you. I see this all the time in the online publishing sphere. Newer freelancers ask to guest blog for bigger content companies and more established freelancers help the newbies get their own content rolling by writing for them. Much like the collaboration thing, guest blogging for one another can help you can your competitors expose your writing to broader audiences. For example, if you guest wrote for my blog, my readers would find you and if I guest blogged for you, your readers would find me. (And if you’re worried about oversaturation being a thing, don’t worry—it isn’t. Click here to read my blog post about it.

You reciprocate with one another. Touching on the guest blogging, collaboration, and knowledge comments I mentioned above, having a friend in your competitors allows you to reciprocate advice, knowledge, help, ideas, and friendship to one another. Being friends with your competition gives you someone to bounce ideas off of, share resources with, and lend an ear or advice to each other. I love being able to recommend my favorite industry resources or current faves to my writerly friends and fellow freelancers. Likewise, its fun to compare services, prices, and styles with other freelancers. I mean, just imagine if someone asked me for advice regarding rates and I had to tell them, “Well, I’d love to help, but you’re kinda my competition. We’re in the same line of work, you know. We’re both editors…so I’d better not.” Ugh, isn’t that just the worst? Total jerk move. You’re losing absolutely nothing by helping your competition out. You get the chance to throw someone a bone, so take it.

Monopoly money, player pieces, and dice. Photo by Suzy Hazelwood.

They can help you get jobs. One of the biggest complaints I hear from freelancers concerning their competition is that they will lose customers/clients to the competition. This one makes me laugh out loud because I can’t tell you how many clients have come to me straight from people I might have considered my competition—editors just like me. There’s enough work and enough clients to go around. If you’ve heard the saying, “Everyone and their mom is a writer,” then it makes sense that everyone and their mom will also need an editor.

I’ve had several clients referred my way by word of mouth from my fellow freelancers and it’s a great feeling knowing I have such an amazing network of colleagues to work with. And the thing is that, as a developmental editor with very specific genre preferences, I don’t want to edit every manuscript ever. My editing skills are best suited to certain types of fiction, so of course, I’m not going to edit a piece of medical writing. But, I know other freelancers who do edit that type of material. And they know they can always refer fiction clients my way in turn.

They love writing as much as you do. This goes without saying but this fact doesn’t just apply to writers. How cool is it to have friends that love the same things you do? This is what got me so exited about college, because I really enjoyed talking with my fellow writers in my English classes. I can’t talk to my dad about the gothic elements in Edgar Allen Poe’s “the Fall of House Usher,” or gush about the homoerotic elements in Walt Whitman’s poetry. But you know who I can nerd out about literature with? That’s right—my editor friend and mentor Kris! We go crazy for the oxford comma, coffee, and cats. We swap poems with each other and workshop them in our free time. She just gets me. And when I’m editing a particularly gnarly manuscript, I can vent to her about it. She not only understands my pain but sends me writing memes to cheer me up.

It teaches you good sportsmanship. You can’t get all the clients and you can’t edit all the manuscripts. This also applies to any other industry with competition, such as sales. Sure, there’s been instances when my fellow editor friends and I are going for the same client. So what do I do when I don’t get the client and my colleague does? I just cry and give up. It’s the end of the world. I might as well pack up shop and give up forever because I’ll never make another sale ever again. Woe is me! Yeah, right. I say, “Good for her/him” and remind myself to step up my own game for next time and move on. It’s really not the end of the world. Like I mentioned before, there’s plenty of work to go around. Don’t get hung up on the one or two or ten missed sales. There’s just as many clients for you.

You cheer each other on. Similar to the previous point, you can celebrate your competitions wins and be there for them during their losses. We’re all in the writing game together. As a team, (if we’re continuing with the sports metaphors) its important to surround ourselves with likeminded individuals who will be rooting for us. And it’s nice to be able to congratulate others on their wins as well. If there’s enough work to go around—and there is, I assure you—then we can all take part in enjoying the process together. I know how much work goes into promoting my own editing biz so its really great seeing my fellow freelancers land new clients. I get to congratulate them and I know they’ll do the same for me in return. It’s a give and take, and I’d have it no other way.

You give love and get love. It’s such a good feeling when I have people coming to me about resources, industry hacks, friends using my blog post to answer someone’s question about newsletter marketing, or readers thanking me for how helpful my freelancing basics blog post was. You remember that friend, Kris I mentioned earlier? She told me her mother read my short story, “The Sieka of Sahn’Jatar” and enjoyed it immensely. I beamed when she told me this. It’s also fun when she and my other writerly friends send me funny writing memes or jokes about grammar, saying “this reminded me of you,” or “I thought you might like this.” I like getting messages like that and I love being able to share that love with them as well.

And lastly, everyone could use another friend. If you’re seriously so worried that you’ll lose business to someone just because their in the same line of work as you, then I think you’ve got a bigger issue on your hands. I don’t know—maybe we just view the world differently, but personally, I want to make even more friends with people that do the same thing I do. It’s not putting me out, endangering my business, or negatively impacting me in anyway to make friends with my competition and I can only see it as a mutually beneficial relationship. And besides, to quote Lady Gaga, “my biggest enemy is me.” It’s true. You can worry all day about your business failing to the competition but the only person you’re truly hurting is yourself. Instead, see if you can befriend your competitors and make some friends along the way.

Challenge: Readers and fellow freelancers, I challenge you to make connections with your competition this week. Find three people in your field who do what you do and reach out to them. Just ask them how they’re doing. Break the ice. Talk. Communicate. Build connections.  We got to check up on our fellow writers during these crazy times. And you never know—you might find a new writerly friend out of it!

And that’s it for my blog post on the importance of befriending your competition. What do you think about making friends with your competitors? Do you agree or disagree? Can you think of a time when you befriended your competition and it worked out in your favor? Tell me all about it in the comments below!

Read more in Freelancing!

Thumbnail photo by Jopwell.

—Payton

Starting Artists, Not Starving Artists

We’ve all heard of the infamous “starving artist” and those of us who are creative often try to avoid becoming this person. As creators, we all want to see our work succeed, or at least, we want to be able to provide for and live a comfortable life that allows us to continue to work on our passions. This is why it is so important that we support starting artists -so they don’t become starving artists, and so we don’t either.

Woman in a pink shirt painting. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio.

As a newer blogger and entrepreneur, I am speaking from experience when I say, going it alone can be overwhelming. There’s so many different elements to consider when trying to get your artwork noticed, and to a point where it can start providing for itself and for you, especially in this digital age, where we must also market ourselves, have an online presence, and constantly remain consistent. It can get overwhelming, pretty quickly.

This is where supporting other artists comes in. It can be so much easier for you to get started with the help of another artist. If you’re designing your own website, for instance, you might want to hire an artist to design your logos or images you’re planning to feature on your site. You might want to hire a freelance blog writer to start getting content up as soon as possible. You might want to hire a web-page designer to put the site together, if that’s not your thing either.

Woman writing in journal with coffee cup in hand. Photo by Lisa Fotios.

There’s so many ways for you to support creatives who are just starting out, and this is just an example for the website. Perhaps yo’re a writer and you’ve got the blog post thing covered, but maybe you don’t have all of the marketing handled, so well. Maybe you need someone to design a book cover for your next manuscript. Maybe you need an up and coming filmmaker to put together a book trailer for your lifestyle book. It doesn’t matter the project, you can always find a way to support an artist or freelancer who is just starting out in their field. In some cases, yes you might want a professional, but if you’re just starting out. or if its not a critical service you’re in need of, hiring an amateur artist can be mutually beneficial.

One way this job opportunity can be mutually beneficial is that it allows for a service review or testimonial for both sides. It also gives both parties a new client. Maybe you’re not designing a website, but no matter the job in question, you have a new client and so does your hire.

Another way this can be beneficial to you, is that it gives you the opportunity to get some of the work done without having to master the skills needed to complete it, yourself. Not all of us can be filmmakers, and writers, and editors, and web developers. While it helps to have a wide range of skills in your arsenal, it is also freeing to delegate and have someone else on your team to take care of these tasks so you can focus on your own service or product.

By supporting artists who are just starting out, you’re freeing up time in your schedule to commit to tasks that are the most important to you, you’re fostering a meaningful relationship between a new member of your team, and you’re giving back to the community. By supporting starting artists, you’re helping them to not become starving artists.

And that’s my hot take on supporting starting artists to avoid starving artists. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

—Payton

Disability and Spectrum Representation in Books

Girl standing next to a person in a wheelchair. Photo by Josh Appel.

One incredibly world-changing element of reading is the ability for readers to connect with and imagine themselves in the shoes of the main character. Readers absolutely must make these crucial connections to the main characters to find a deeper immersion and foster a more enriched reading experience.

Unfortunately, not everyone can make these connections so easily. Accurate and respectful representation of both physical and mental disabilities in books is not nearly as prominent as it should be. In fact, that’s an understatement. The majority of books out there, are usually set in the viewpoint of a non-disabled individual, so, readers with disabilities may not find these characters easy to build a bond with. This should be concerning for everyone, because not only do accurate and respectful portrayals of disabled people help educate and inform the readers, it also helps to teach them about compassion.

We begin teaching kindness and sharing at a very, very young age and nurture those values all the way into adulthood, so, why shouldn’t we also be teaching compassion and understanding, especially for those with disabilities. Inclusive stories provide an incredible sense of joy and providing children with these works is critical in fostering an empathetic, compassionate and understanding new generation.

While inclusiveness is incredibly important, it is likewise important to look beyond the disability and see the person. This way of thinking is often referred to person-first, where people don’t simply identify disabled individuals with their disability. Disabled people are people too, and should be treated with respect and dignity, no matter the situation.

This isn’t all to say that accurate and respectful representation of disabilities don’t exist, but in the vast amount of books that we have, there should be way more representation and way more inclusion. As I mentioned before, inclusion provides a great sense of joy and is vital to the way readers experience a story. It’s imperative that these representations find their way into more books.

Likewise, most of these representations are found in non-fiction or informative books, but those books aren’t for everyone, and don’t provide readers with a main character to connect with. We need to see more fictional stories where disabilities are accurately and respectfully portrayed. A few that come to mind are listed below. Please comment any that you feel should be added to the list.

Books that have successfully and accurately portrayed disabled individuals in a way where readers can connect with the characters:

• Wonder by R.J. Palacio

• Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

• An Oath of Dogs by Wendy N. Wagner

• Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner

• Lupine Road by Cal Matthews

More can be found on Goodreads, at https://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/disability-themes

—Payton