It’s always intimidating to meet others in your field. Networking isn’t quite the right word in my personal dictionary, but it’s pretty close. You “pitch” yourself to people you’ve never met before, talk about whatever industry drew you together in the first place, then hope you made a good enough impression that at least someone remembers your name and the fun fact you tossed into the void.
I call this networking, but is it really? Networking, to me, always implied contacts gained to be contacts used. But in my experience, that’s not quite how it works. Or, at least, it’s not practical.
Being a recent college grad probably definitely has something to do with this. I’m used to being the youngest person in the room, the one without a minute-long career journey to be summarized to a group of similarly-situated semi-acquaintances. I don’t have a title or a long list of accolades to bolster my impression of professionalism.
In the aforementioned college experience, networking was broken down into something both clinical and mechanical. It was to be used solely to help your present or future self, although you couldn’t make it seem like you wanted to get anything out of the transaction (which is why you should always request a meeting in a coffee shop and then pay for said coffee).
Fun and networking were never used in the same sentence. This was something everyone did in every industry, and it was basically an invisible requirement. You needed to do this to succeed, but you couldn’t make it obvious, and you also needed to keep semi-regular contact with these strangers professionals so they might think of you in the future. (For what reason? Unclear. Various. Probably job related.)
You can see how this is overwhelming to a recent grad, right? It doesn’t seem possible, let alone plausible. I had a hard enough time keeping in semi-regular contact with my college friends, and now I had to try even harder for people in my industry that, frankly, intimidated me. They knew what they were doing, I did not. End of story. Fear stoked.
So, yes, the idea of networking scares me. Maybe I’m just not doing it right, or maybe this is something that becomes easier with time and experience, but it’s something I’ve easily put off. Substack, Instagram, TikTok—these are all things I can immediately practice and perfect. It was much more believable that networking would come in time, preferably at least a decade from now.
But we all know better. Of course networking would come for me if I didn’t embrace it first.
This past weekend, I got the opportunity to meet up with some fellow writers in Nashville. Because in my head it was networking, I was, understandably, nervous. I kept practicing my elevator pitch in the car, and because the host of this event was a published author, I even checked out his book at the library to get a feel for his work.
In my head, I was hyping this up as some big event. Really, I was treating it as a work-adjacent meeting instead of a social gathering. Because, spoiler alert, that’s what it was—a social gathering.
Tucked into a corner booth in the middle of a very “Nashville” place (music posters spanning more than a decade dominating the walls, menu items with names almost too silly to say out loud, a little corner devoted to the QR code that will validate your parking), I didn’t just sit in a meeting. I hung out with fellow writers.
Yes, there were introductions and writer talk. We gushed over the popularity of southern fiction while admonishing southern stereotypes (spoiler alert, I don’t like sweet tea). So many encouraging words were casually tossed my way just for being on submission, and each of us had a WIP that sounded like they belonged on my bookshelf.
They best part, though, might have been the not writer things. The wacky, kind of insane, completely true stories that inspired our current projects; the definition of a carriage house; the tried-and-true 6 degrees of separation rule that, it turns out, just might be true. This wasn’t just a work meeting, this was a group of people hanging out and, intentionally or not, making each other laugh.
If someone told College Randi that this was, in a way, networking, she wouldn’t believe you. Besides talking about what I do for a living (many things), where I live (1 hour north of Bowling Green), and how much I love my agent right now for doing all the hard work while I play Dreamlight Valley (that’s not entirely true, I also do work, I swear), I didn’t “pitch” myself to a group of people or try to make connections that would mysteriously benefit me in the long run. I just met people, hung out for two hours, and went home feeling better than before.
Maybe our group remembers my name, maybe they don’t. I think they’ll definitely remember the 23 year-old that had a two-hour drive waiting for her but didn’t want to leave. I certainly remember the woman going to Scotland soon, inspired by a family member (so jealous), the woman whose mother thinks not naming your kids after other family members is tacky (I still laugh thinking about that), and the man who gave me the amazing news that my favorite sci-fi movie Arrival is based off of a novella (currently checking it out at my library, thank you very much).
And although I’ll probably be just as nervous the next time I get to meet writing professionals and enthusiasts, I’ll still go. I had too much fun this last time around not to give it another try.
I’ve at least got to get to that third-times-a-charm stage first, right?
End of Week Writing Stats
Days Worked: 3
Words Added: 3,4951
Handfuls of Motivational Snacks: 0
Not all Days Worked involves adding to a word count, but I still managed to find time this week. Go Randi!