You Already Have a Writing Team

Like me you are probably trying to build a support team for your writing — a reading group, a critique group, editors, an agent, an IT person who will come to the rescue in the middle of the night for free, publishers, publicists, etc. But you already have a writing team. A team that is easily forgotten.

The other day I contacted a guy to hire to help me do communications for a ministry I am involved in. I emailed him that I was looking for a Felicity from the CW’s Arrow and a Cisco from CW’s Flash. Like you, possibly, he didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, but lucky his wife watched the two television shows. Arrow is a television show based off the DC Comics character Green Arrow. Green Arrow is a crime fighting vigilante who wears a green hood and uses a bow. Flash is a television show based off the DC Comics character Flash who after being hit by lightning gains supernatural speed which he uses to do good in his city.

The two shows have caught my attention. For one, I was a comic book nerd back in the day, but secondly, it has given an interesting take about other people in the lives of these superheroes. Both characters have a team that helps them. Green Arrow has Diggle who helps with intelligence and crime fighting, and he has Felicity who is a computer guru. The Flash has Joe who is a detective, Caitlyn who is a scientific genius, and Cisco who is a technology guru. In every episode it is evident that the superheroes can’t accomplish their missions alone.

The shows go beyond the immediate “official” team and shows how the hero’s mission affects so many others lives. There are those who know the hero’s true identity and struggle to carry that burden. Then there are the family members and love ones who do not know the identity, but still feel the effects of the hero’s double life.

Now maybe it is self-serving to attempt to connect my writing to a superhero, but I need all the encouragement I can get. No seriously, our writing ministries are important. Like the Arrow and the Flash we are trying to change the world, and we aren’t doing it alone. You can’t accomplish your writing mission alone — it takes a team. Click To Tweet

If you have written for any period of time then you have a good team that works hard to let you “save the world.” I imagine you have a team like me. I have my wife who has for years given up her husband’s one day off and her only day to have a break from being mom to allow me to write. She has agreed to invest money into editing, critiques, contests, and writers conferences all the while knowing my promise that we would eventually make it back was a lie. Then there are my daughters who sacrifice their Daddy time and play without him even though he is just a closed door and headphones away. Then there is my congregation that has not received their pastor’s full attention so that he could write. There are my parents who know they are in trouble when they get older because their writer son is going to be busy spending 2,000 hours on a manuscript that will never see daylight and not be able to help them, and he sure is not going to have any money. They are a team player willing to offer my family a place to live if turns to that. Then my poor in-laws who know I can’t provide what their daughter deserves because I spend too much time watching stupid YouTube videos and reading “Where are the WWE Stars Now?” — uh, I mean writing. Then there are my fishing and hunting buddies who have to go alone because I’m hanging out in my office drawing ligers.

Again if you have written for any period of time you too have a team like me. Remember them. You can’t do it alone, but you already have a writing team.