Finding your tribe

Lilac Mills
17 hours ago
2 min read

A cliche? Yep.

True anyway? Absolutely!

Writing, by its very nature, is a mostly solitary affair, often undertaken in the cracks between other lifey stuff. And it isn’t easy for non-writers to empathise – which is why I believe it helps to have author friends. You may only have writing books in common, but that’s okay, because they’ll understand when you’re struggling with a plot point, or when your characters are misbehaving and heading in a direction you don’t want them to go. They’ll be there for you when you need inspiration or ideas, or a good old moan about publisher problems, or when you read a devastating one-star review that crushes you. And they’re also there to celebrate the wins: the end of a difficult chapter, the completion of a first draft, the publication day of your new book.

Lilac Mills with the Cariad Chapter of the RNA at the Summer Fling.

That’s not to say family and non-writer friends can’t offer you support. They can, will, and do. But there’s nothing like the friendship and support of other writers for authory things.

It took me a long time to find my tribe. Almost ten years in fact. I’d been writing and self-publishing for that long before I joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association and began to appreciate the support my fellow authors can provide. The RNA is typically split into smaller groups called – appropriately – chapters, and I’m part of the Welsh one.

It’s called the Cariad Chapter (‘cariad’ means love or darling in Welsh), and I blimmin’ love these ladies. Our monthly meetings keep me sane, and their support has seen me through some challenging times.

If you write romance in the UK, you might want to consider joining the RNA. This isn’t a plug for the Association, by the way; it’s just that it’s been brilliant for me. There are other groups like the Savvy Writers Facebook group, or the Society of Authors, to name two, that are equally as supportive and are for all genres and subjects.

It might take courage to reach out to authors you don’t know, and it might take you a little while to find your tribe, but when you do, it’ll be worth it.

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