Choosing Professional Organizations

Belonging to the right professional organizations can help you network, learn, and advance your career. For writers and editors, the choices abound. I've spent all day checking out a list of websites collected from various publications, conference notes, and online searching.

So I won't have to do this again a year or two from now, when my status changes, I made a spreadsheet. If you've never used spreadsheets, try using one for notes.

Across the top I listed: Type of Organization, Maintains a Profile? Name/website, Cost, Yes/No/Maybe Notes, and Membership expires.

As I went through my list of websites, I found I was looking at four types of organizations: Writers Association, Editors Association, Screenwriters Associations, and Publishers Associations. Some of them were more general than that, for example WGA is not just for screenwriters, but my interest in each was one of those four areas.

The cool thing about spreadsheets is, with a simple click, I can sort it all by Type of Organization & Name, so all the Editors Associations will come first, and organizations within each category will be in alphabetical order. So I just added each association as I looked at the website, without worrying about where the notes would end up. They just went on the next line and the sorting came later.

I may add a column for Active, Maybe Later, and No and make that the first layer of sorting. That way the ones in which I have no interest will be at the bottom - where I can check when the name comes up again and see why I've not been interested.

And the sort is not locked in - I can vary it to meet whatever needs I may have in the future.

As for which organizations to join? Here are the factors I was considering today:

• Will it help me meet my current goals?

• How? What services will I use?

• Is it an established, respected organization?

• Do I qualify as a member - and if not, what do I need to achieve to qualify?

• Is it a non-profit or a commercial enterprise? (.org or .com is a start)

• Will I have a professional profile at the site?

• How much does it cost?

Some day I want to join WGA, but to qualify, I have earn enough working for signatory companies within a specified time period. Right now most of my writing time is going to this blog and marketing, so I don't really need a critique network right now. There are several websites that will post resumes and gigs. I may revisit some of those if word-of-mouth and a little advertising doesn't keep me busy.

I'm leaning toward the .org groups that have been around for a hundred years and don't have a lot of stuff for sale. I'll probably join one group for each activity.

Life planning - child style

I've been struggling for some time on whether or not I really want to write.

My mother always wanted to be a writer. When I got home from school, the dining room table would be covered in piles of paper along with the Writer's Market and Mom's Smith-Corona manual typewriter. Her dream was to have a story published in the Saturday Evening Post, but the only work that made it to print was one letter to the editor of the Buffalo Evening News. Do I really want to write? Or am I trying to fulfill my mother's dream for her?

Well, the Saturday Evening Post published one of my stories in their 2016 anthology.

So if I was writing for her, do I need to keep writing?

Or do I have dreams I've ignored for her quest?

Last week, I found an answer. Somehow, through the many moves of my life, I kept a small, plastic-covered notebook: Camp Fire Honors hand-written on the cover. Camp Fire Girls was an enormous influence on my childhood. It was a positive force, encouraging my best and challenging me to expand my horizons. There are many memories in that book, including my notes on the name I chose for myself as a Camp Fire Girl.

Everything I have become as an adult was there in that book, in the name I chose. Even in elementary school, I had an understanding of the need for balance in life. My name reflected this by being based on three elements:

• Being well and healthy, spending time outdoors

• Having a family and making a home

• Creativity - and I specified writing

These still apply. I've expanded the outdoor piece to include having adventures in life. I create my nest wherever I'm living and home is wherever family connects, whether virtually or in person. While I specified writing, I was also acting and singing and playing piano back then, and sewing without patterns and doing art projects and photography.

I may have specified writing because it was my strongest skill, which was probably due to my mother's guidance and encouragement. However, I kept writing because of the positive reinforcement I got from my teachers and my peers, with whom I wrote school plays. As I drifted through my young adult years, trying to find a path, I kept taking writing classes and getting that reinforcement. Even when I wasn't writing fiction, I was carefully crafting documents for work. I never stopped writing. My dreams include adventure and family, but I will always write.

I've fulfilled my mother's dream; the rest is mine.

I write.

Fiction Ramblings

Okay.

I write fiction (see the three books featured in this post's image). Those books have sold remarkably well, considering I have done virtually no marketing. The readers of Running Away asked for the mom's story and it's finally ready. Peg's Story: Detours will be released in 2020. I'm still planning to self-publish, but I'm trying to do this marketing thing better.

Today, I signed up with NetGalley as a reviewer (that's free). They actually have a Women's Fiction category! In Women's Fiction, it's about the woman. There might be a romantic thread, but it's not the main point of the story. Whatever else the woman's going through, whatever transformations take place, are NOT dependent on the romance.

I will be SO happy when awards, sales sites, etc. catch up and add Women's Fiction as a category.

Anyway, I plan on reading as many of the NetGalley books in the Women's category as I can, and will post reviews of any that I like here, and once they're available for sale, at Amazon. (If I don't like a book, odds are I won't finish it and I won't review based on a partial reading.)

Oh, by the way. If you have read any of my books (see the image), please check and, if you never posted a review at Amazon, do it - to help other people find my books. You can follow the links from my Amazon Author page. Thanks.