Cultivating Generosity in the Writing Community: 4 Mindset Shifts

Writing can be a lonely pursuit.

Composing books requires hours of solitary work, shutting ourselves away for short 10-minute bursts or hour-long sessions. And not just one shut-away chunk of time. Hundreds. More.

I don’t mind being alone. I’m a solitary person. I run alone, spend the bulk of my weekdays alone while my kids are in school, write alone (most of the time). I live in a house full of people, and maybe that’s why this alone-time is so valuable to me. My days are also filled with frantic activity and loud voices and constant questions. Solitude feels peaceful (though I wouldn’t want it all the time).

Writing can also be a shared pursuit—and perhaps it should be.

That’s not to say we should write with people, or that the only writing that counts is when someone else is in the room. It’s only to say that, like most things, we’re stronger together. And we’re all in this together.

We’re all in this together.

Even in our solitary work, our solitary pursuit of a writing career, it’s important to remember that we should be generous with each other. It’s not a competition. We’re all on the same team. We should be lifting each other up instead of tearing each other down.

I’ve recently seen some alarming activity in the writing world, writers pitted against other writers. Inflammatory things said and done. Public condemnation. It all makes my head and heart hurt. Maybe it’s the social conditioning I had as a kid—if you don’t have something nice to say, just don’t say anything.

That’s not always the answer. I know that. Callouts are necessary. It’s how we change things that need changing. It’s how we flag bad behavior and erroneous beliefs.

But.

We live so publicly as writers. We point out wrongdoings publicly—and I’m not saying we shouldn’t point out bad behavior. But can it not be done less publicly, maybe? Can we at least remember there’s another human being on the other side, however misguided they may be?

So many people are hurting. And writing is a lonely pursuit. We carry our burdens alone. Some of us never learned that’s not the world’s fault. Some of us never learned there’s enough room for all of us. That’s not an excuse for bad behavior. It’s just context. And context is necessary when we want to be empathetic human beings.

What do we owe each other? Certainly not blind allegiance. The recent past has taught us there are writers with problematic belief systems and worldviews. People who do terrible things. People who disappoint others with their actions and words.

But maybe we owe each other dignity? Respect? An I-see-you nod? I don’t have an answer to that question.

As a writing community, though, I believe we do owe each other some level of support and empathy. We’re all trying to do the best we can with what we have—but we’re not perfect. We’re human.

Some of us can lose ourselves in this business. It’s not an easy one. We need each other to lift the lost and broken back up and remind them who they are. Who we are.

When people do egregious things, I don’t always see them through the eyes of compassion. I have to work really hard to get there.

And I’m not always a generous person. I sometimes want what others have—those awards, the six-figure book deals, the place on the bestseller list…that’s a very human response. We can all understand it.

The problem comes when we get trapped in mindsets that don’t leave room for each other. Mindsets like:

There’s not enough to go around.

There’s only room for a select few.

They got a space, so I don’t get one.

I shouldn’t feel this way.

I don’t belong.

Those mindsets tell a story that can turn into the kind of despair and fear and anxiety and anger that may lead us to act in less-than-honorable ways. We’ve seen it again and again. Why do people do what they do? Because they’re afraid or angry or miserable.

When we shift those mindsets, we begin to see things more clearly. More generously. We have the capacity to be a real community.

Here are four mindset shifts that can help us practice generosity with each other:

Mindset #1: Every emotion is acceptable.

My children have grown up with this reminder. They’re allowed to feel whatever emotion they’re feeling—good or bad. Every emotion is acceptable. But not every action we do because of that emotion is acceptable.

Lashing out at someone—not acceptable. Tearing someone down because we’re feeling jealous of what they have—not acceptable. Sabotaging someone because we’re afraid they’ll take what we deserve—not acceptable.

When we bury our feelings or deny them or try to talk ourselves out of them, without the proper feeling of them, we only make them worse. And buried emotions get bigger and more intense the longer they’re buried. Acknowledging them is always better than ignoring them.

Sometimes it’s hard to see someone else win an award or achieve so much more success with the book they published at the same time ours published. Rather than begrudge each other our accomplishments, we can let ourselves feel the sting of why not me—a very human and natural response—and then, once we’ve dealt with those initial emotions, we can genuinely celebrate with our writer friends who have accomplished remarkable things.

Mindset #2: What “they” get doesn’t take away from what I get.

We all get what we need. Everything that belongs to us comes to us. There’s more than enough for all of us.

Sometimes it’s someone else’s day. It can’t always be our day. What they get doesn’t take away from what we have or what’s coming to us.

I know how hard this is to wrap our minds around. I grew up with a scarcity mindset, in a family that didn’t always have enough, that sometimes fell through the cracks. I have to work very hard not to feel like and believe that one person’s success doesn’t take away from mine.

Mindset #3: This is not a competition.

If we cut ourselves off from one another and make this a competition, we make what can be a lonely place even lonelier. There’s so much mystery in this business. So much happens behind closed doors. We can help one another navigate these dark corridors by sharing our experience, offering support, creating a community that thrives on peace and empathy and love.

We’re so much more when we work together. Think of what writers can achieve when they stop seeing each other as competitors or rivals and they start seeing each other as members of the same community, trying to accomplish the same thing—bring about a little good in the world.

Mindset #4: I belong.

This is, arguably, the most difficult mindset to change. We all want a place to belong. We all, at some time or another, feel like we don’t belong in the writing community. Imposter syndrome is real; I feel it on a weekly basis. Who knows what they’re doing all the time? We doubt ourselves.

But when we feel like we belong, we have a greater capacity to be generous.

We may have to write the words, giant and thick, on a post-it note or a notecard or a wall-sized dry erase board we keep where we can see it, every day, while we’re writing. So we don’t forget. So it becomes a core belief.

You belong. I belong. We belong.

What does it look like in practicality, being generous? How can we be generous with each other?

We can practice generosity in the ways we think about and talk about each other. We can share each other’s books and let new readers know about them. We can share resources and practices that helped us along the way to publication. We can offer up our best-kept marketing secrets, because why are they secrets? Isn’t that letting the scarcity mindset win?

We can provide emotional support and empathy. We can help each other learn and see the big picture and remember who we are and that we deserve a vote and a place at the proverbial table. Some of my favorite friends are writers, because they understand exactly what I’m going through—why I feel frustrated today, the dark night of my soul tomorrow. No one understands that quite like writers.

There’s always someone behind us on the journey who can use a little help. We can keep our eyes open for them. Of course we invest in our own journey and career, but we can also invest in others. And maybe our generosity comes back to us, maybe it doesn’t, but we can’t help but be changed by generosity, even if it’s only taking one step forward along the road to an abundance, I-am-enough, there-is-enough mindset.

Generosity changes lives and careers. It also changes us. Anne Lamont says, “There is no cosmic importance to your getting something published, but there is in learning to be a giver.”

When I was a debut author about to publish my first book, I attended my first conference as an author. I knew no one there. But I saw that one of the poet/authors I admired, Laura Shovan, was also there. I’d just finished reading her book, The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary, aloud to my kids. We’d all loved it. She’s a phenomenal writer and poet.

And, it turns out, she’s a phenomenal human being. Because when I reached out to her (in fan-girl style) and said I’d love to meet her, she didn’t just set up a quick meeting place to exchange polite hellos—she brought me into the fold of a group of established and accomplished poets. They welcomed me with open arms.

I want to be like that—the kind of person who takes a newbie author under her wing at an overwhelming conference and says, You belong. See?

There have been many more over the years. I haven’t gotten where I am today without the help of many. I don’t know if I can ever repay them. They don’t need my help, anyway. That hasn’t stopped me from trying.

But I’ve also turned my sights behind me. Maybe the best way to repay the authors who have helped me is to help someone else. Pay it forward.

Community is a safe place to land. A place to belong. We are a community, and we all belong. And there is plenty of room for us all.

Where have you seen generosity in the writing community? How can you practice generosity in your own writing career? What do you think we owe each other as fellow writers?

Rachel Toalson

Rachel Toalson writes lots of books. For lots of people–kids, teens, adults, fiction lovers, poetry lovers, essay lovers. People who adore realistic stories or magical realism or fantasy or tales that keep them up at night or make them laugh out loud. She writes the books she most wants to read, which is the best way to entertain herself and her kids and get a little peace and quiet in her excessively loud home. She’s the author of the middle grade books, The Colors of the Rain, which won the Arnold Adoff Poetry Honor Award in 2018, The Woods, and The First Magnificent Summer, among many others. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband and six children.

www.racheltoalson.com/