Find a writer buddy

I think every writer needs a writer buddy. Seriously. Someone who’s opinion you trust above all but your agent (and editor, if you’re lucky enough to get both! And readers if ever you’re lucky enough to get more then 5 of them too!).

I have a writer buddy. I call her Bertie (see our shadows above while on our literary retreat with two other pals this summer). We met several years ago at a company that kept us in a dungeon-like office, toiling away over magazines with ridiculous deadlines and not enough staff. The first thing I said to her? ‘OMG, do you love Tom Welling too?’ after seeing her Smallville screensaver. I think that’s what did it for us – that little spark of connection; an acknowledgment we were both still 14-years-olds living in late-20s bodies

Anyway, when she’d had enough of that dungeon and left, we stayed in touch, our mutual love of writing and desire to GET PUBLISHED drawing us together. We used to meet in The Harvester and walk about our dreams and our ideas and our frustrations.

It wasn’t until she started talking about her own YA book that I started to think, ‘ya know, young adult might be an option for me too’. I think, without her, I might not have seriously considered it at that stage in my life – and Book 1 may never have been written.

Since then, she’s always been the first one to read my stuff; she was the first one I forwarded my first request for a full from an agent to and I think she was even the first one I called when I got The Call from my agent (sorry mum! Sorry hubby!).

Why? Because being a writer – and when I say writer, I mean someone who puts writing in their top 5 of important things in life – has its peculiar joys and it’s very peculiar pains. Only another writer can truly understand the obsession, the yearning, the drama and the tears. Sure, I know other people who write but Bertie’s the real deal, the one who really gets it. Who really understands why I’m still tapping away at midnight at the weekend or why everything else, sometimes, diminishes in the big fat spark of a new book I’m working on.

Of course, people understand and put up with it. My mum, my hubby. But only another writer with the same intense hunger can just get it.

So yeah, we bounce off each other. But also, I really value what she thinks about my stuff. She’s an editor / journalist by trade (award-winning, might I add!); an amazing writer (though she doesn’t believe that yet but I think one day she will and I’ll say ‘told ya so!’) and an amazing reader. She finds stuff others don’t but most importantly, she tells me what her gut says.

So when I send her something, I have that same excitement and anticipation I get when sending it to my agent. And a glowing report from her is honestly enough to make me write like the devil and restore my faith in my writing.

So what I’m saying is – find a writer buddy. They’re more valuable than you can imagine.

I’m also saying thank you Bertie. It will happen. x

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