Give yourself a gift of a partner. Everybody has a first book experience waiting for them. You may have more than one first book, if you’re an author who will publish themselves along with winning a contract with a publisher. You only get to this debut after you finish a book. You will do better at that finishing with help from buddies.
Your first accomplishment in completing a book is telling people about when you will finish. My first creativity coach Sue told me this is like tossing a cap over a wall that you will scale. “There’s his cap,” people will say, “and so I know he’s coming over the wall eventually.”
NPR reminds us of that buddy power. A meaty 18-minute podcast talks about how teaming up with another person or a group to hold each other accountable. You complete tasks that might otherwise seem challenging.
There’s a nice mantra to hold close when making a book. “This is challenging, but it’s not impossible.” We are more satisfied and fulfilled when we engage in something challenging but not impossible. The effort intrigues us. Living a life of intrigue is one clear way to happiness.
Here’s how to set up a successful partnership:
- Find a partner who knows about the desire to write.
- Your partner should have their own writing goals, too.
- Find someone who’ll meet with you consistently.
You work toward a common goal. NPR reported that Leah Shaffer, who lives outside of Houston, works with an accountability buddy to focus on her creative writing goals.
She and her buddy, who is also a writer with their own writing goals, have been meeting every Friday for over a year on Zoom. Before she met her buddy, she had written one draft of her vampire novel. But this year, she’s rewritten it three times and written two more books, she says. “I don’t think I would have gotten the work done I hadn’t had my buddy.”
Our own partnerships
I lead a support and productivity group called Finishing School. The point is to make a personal connection with a creativity sparkplug. That can be someone you know already, but more importantly, someone you don’t know yet and need to help your writing surface.
Finishing School delivers you a creativity buddy, someone who you can text when you start working on your book. You’ll know somebody cares that you’re writing or revising — and it can make a big difference to building and maintaining a habit.
I also lead Lunchroom Zoom meetings, where authors get to know one another. Get in touch for a login Zoom link. Books and creativity are our bedrock. From that kind of time together, you could connect to make a buddy for your book that you will finish this year. You might only need one accountability buddy to make a difference.
You also might find help in co-working on Zoom, where we write starting with prompts, if you need that creative tool. Mostly we enjoy our writing time where we focus for 30 minutes just writing whatever comes. People tell me they write more on their own on those days, even after the co-working ends. That’s one way to get a partnership into your writing life.
