The vision of a lone writer, pen poised over fine vellum in a room of dark wood and poring over prose in seclusion has faded into legend. If this romanticized view of writing had persisted into our generation, our profession would have died. An overarching theme of The 2012 Philadelphia Writer’s Conference encouraged writers to work collaboratively to forward the craft of writing, develop a society of readers, and assist each other in producing high quality work. With so many competing distractions playing upon a society starved for time, writers must pool talents to generate substantive and quality content to capture attention, engage readers and build audiences.
Author Jonathan Mayberry launched these 2012 conference themes during his keynote address. He described writers as sharing the same insecurities, goals, and passions no matter what literary flavors we preferred or what points we had reached within our writing careers. Many writers already seek and offer help through writers’ groups, classes, and social media. Mayberry encouraged conference participants to network even further, expand professional circles, and to leave our dark-paneled writing rooms. Assisting each other to create our best works possible is key to the health of our profession, not just individual careers.
The notion of competitiveness among authors in getting published– the belief one author getting published in some way diminishes other’s opportunities to get published– is false and harmful to the future of our profession. Quite the opposite is true. If one author can help another publish a good piece of writing, the newly published piece will grow readership increasing the demand for more good work opening more opportunities for publication. Without a steady stream of quality content entering the market, reader-audiences contract, the industry shrinks, and publication becomes more difficult.
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