Cooperation & Community vs Competion
I find it interesting what can inspire work related thoughts.
Recently I was scheduled to fly home from a lovely vacation. After nearly four hours sitting on the plane, the pilot told us our flight had been canceled. In fact, all flights leaving Heathrow were canceled (roughly 1,000 flights if you were wondering). Everyone who had checked luggage needed to pick it up and then basically, good luck. The airlines weren’t going to book us into hotels for the night but we were welcome to get a hotel ourselves and then talk to the airline about getting repaid.
While waiting for my luggage to appear I started looking at hotels near the airport. The close ones ranged around £100 for a night. Since I couldn’t book a room and focus on finding my bag at the same time, I half-heartedly scrolled hotels while mostly watching for my bag. In the 30 minutes or so it took for my bag to arrive I watched the hotel prices start to go up. And up. And up. By the time I could focus on booking a room, some prices had made it to £1,000.
Do I need to tell you I spent the night in Heathrow Airport?
Pitching In
Naturally everyone needed to try to get new flights and call people after this, and electrical plugs were at a premium very fast. And, according to human nature, once someone had their place at a plug they were not moving from it.
Here’s where my story connects to writing communities.
The adapter I use for England has multiple plugs and can charge a lot of devices at once. More than I needed. So when I saw people searching, I’d invite them to see if their cord would work on my charger. Within no time I had about six people sitting around me charging their phones and anytime one left, someone else would ask if they could use it. Everyone was so grateful. Several people offered to pay me. Of course I said no—we were all in the same situation and all needed whatever would make things easier.
While the hotels and rideshares were using dynamic pricing to take advantage of all the people already stressed out, the people who stayed at the airport overnight entered into a spirit of community and cooperation: sharing outlets, watching luggage when needed, etc. It made an uncomfortable, stressful night a little less stressful.
Writing
This made me think of writing. Traditionally, we think of writing as a lone enterprise, everyone fighting everyone else for their bit of the publishing action. But slowly, that thinking is changing. And I think we should encourage it. We may each sit down at keyboards to write by ourselves, but joining communities big or small can help take a bit of the stress out. From large groups like Mystery Writers of America to smaller groups like Women In Publishing; local groups through bookstores or online groups, each has something to offer us, depending on where we are in our writing journey and our own personality. Are we looking for advise as a newbie writer? Thoughts on how to find editors? Tips from people who have already published independently? Maybe we’re just looking for people like us, who will understand our complaints and questions even if they don’t have all the answers.
From finding resources to offering emotional support, communities are great ways to make the writing and publishing process easier and more fun for us all. It’s a bit of a cliché, but we aren’t competing with each other. We’re all working to write our best books, get them to the right people and enhance the genre we’re writing in as a whole. So, instead of working against each other the way the London hotels did (which made no one happy I promise you!), why not work together to make ourselves stronger?
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