The Four Stages of Asking for Help
By: Jennie Nash
Tags: Support, Writing, Asking For Help, Books And Authors, Authors

The following tweets were written by Bécquer Seguín, an assistant professor of Iberian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He was sharing a chain of tweets about an article he had just written for Post45, a publication where scholars write about literature. His piece, Why Write for the Public, is about the transformation he had to go through as an academic who decided to write for the public and the tweets are a kind of behind-the-scenes peek at what he wrote.

I’m calling out these specific tweets because Seguín captures a deep truth about asking for help with creative and intellectual work: it’s not a one-time event. It’s an ongoing practice.

So often we think of writers as people who work alone in a room, and we think of our writing as something that has to be protected — either from outside influences that might sully our voice and our vision, or from people who might flat out steal our work.

Both those fears are valid to be sure — although the fear of someone stealing an idea is not logical, because you can’t own an idea. You can only own the execution of it. In any case, you have to be intentional and aware of how you ask for help.

But pick up any book and read the acknowledgments and you can find evidence that most writers are hardly working in a vacuum. They have supporters and colleagues and compatriots and mentors and beta readers and book coaches and agents and editors. I don’t know of any successful writer who doesn’t have a long roster of people who have helped them.

Seguín mentioned three stages of asking for help:

Being inspired to think about it Being connected to people who can help you get your work out Coming to understand the value of what you have written

For book-length work, I would add a 4th stage (in the #3 spot): Support for the long haul.

Let’s look at each of these a little more closely.

1. Being inspired to think about it

We’ve all had people in our lives who encourage us to simply THINK about writing a book. They say, “That would make a great book,” or “That sounds like the title of a book,” or “You could totally write that!” or “NO IT’S NOT TOO LATE TO BE A WRITER!” These people are encouraging us to think about it — to try on the possibility of being a writer. They play such an important role in our coming to believe ourselves that we might be able to do it.

The flip side of this kind of inspiration are the people who try to talk you OUT of taking a risk or a chance, who say, “Why would you do that?” or “But you can’t write,” or “But you’ve never done it before,” or some other passive-aggressive, mean-spirited thing meant to shut you down. Make sure you DON’T listen to THEM.

2. Being connected to people who can help you get your work out

Seguín is, I think, referring to people who have introduced him to magazine editors who publish his work, but this stage is important for all writers. “People who can help you get your work out” doesn’t just mean agents or editors. It can mean anyone who can help you connect to potential readers, either online or in person. It could be librarians or bookstore clerks or book reviewers or bloggers or friends or influencers or other writers.

Reaching readers is a massive undertaking that is part of every book writer’s work. Ideally, it begins as soon as you begin writing so you can build and grow your audience, and build the muscle you need to know how to make authentic connections.

No writer today can get out of doing the work of getting your work out. It falls squarely on the writer, no matter how you publish. This doesn’t have to be a burden. It is, after all, about connections. And we live in a hyper-connected time where it’s never been easier to make connections.

This actual post is a perfect example: I saw this piece by Seguín because in it he mentions Aaron Schulman. I met Aaron on Twitter because he lives in the town I just moved back to. We connected on Twitter and then connected in person and have gotten together a few times for coffee to talk about books and writing and book coaching. I now see what he retweets. So I am now connected to Seguín. Will any of this be immediately “useful” to me when I launch my next book in January? Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not always about utility. It’s also just about forming a web of connections to people who are paying attention to the same things you are paying attention to.

But notice that I sought out the connection with Aaron. I moved it from online connection to in-person connection by asking. He subsequently asked me to get together a second time because I had some knowledge he knew I could provide — he asked for help — and I was happy to oblige. In this way, we deepened our connection.

3. Support for the long haul

This is the one I added because writing a book takes time — especially the first time. It’s relatively easy to start — to write three chapters or 50 pages or maybe even a whole first draft — but it’s hard to do what has to be done to get the work to match the vision you have in your head.

For this stage, you need people who get that it might be months or years before you have anything to show for your effort. You need people who understand that sometimes a good day of writing means throwing out 100 pages. You need people who are not afraid of the doubt and despair you may feel.

This kind of support can come from non-writer friends and family and maybe even your dog. More likely, it will come from writer friends who are in the arena with you, doing the hard work, too. As the CEO of a book coaching company, I obviously believe that a book coach is an ideal way to get this support — they are there with you every step of the way as you develop the work.

One of my clients recently took a workshop with a famous writer at Thrillerfest, and the encouragement and support she got from this person was both an enormous confidence-booster and potentially even an actual business connection (the famous person offered an agent introduction) — so sometimes it makes sense to buy that kind of support by going to industry events and signing up for these kinds of opportunities.

4. Coming to understand the value of what you have written

This last phase is so critical to the writer who is about to put their work into the world to be evaluated and judged. You want to believe that what you wrote is “good enough” — which has two important pieces. The first piece is whether or not it is “good enough” in your own mind. Are you proud of what you have done? Do you feel that it is your best work? Does it resonate with what you wanted to create? This may be the most valuable value judgment of all — and remember: no one can give you this or take it away.

The second piece is whether or not the world of readers thinks it’s “good enough.” I believe this is what Seguín is referring to. At this stage, you are indeed looking to outside entities to give you that validation. It’s what we all want — the agent backing us, the big book deal, the massive marketing budget from a publisher, bestseller status, big sales, whatever the metric. We want to know that other people value what we have written.

You can go to a professional to get an assessment of your work prior to putting it out there — an editor or book coach, or if you have a well-published friend willing to read your work and give an honest assessment. But at a certain point, you have to just take the leap and pitch or publish.

You may not get back the validation you desire. The value of what you have written may not prove to be worth a lot in the marketplace of public opinion. Asking for validation comes with this risk. And as a creator, you have to be willing to face that truth, and then decide how to proceed. Your decision may in large part have to do with the first piece I mentioned — how you value it.

Asking for help is not always easy. We like to believe we can do things on our own — that we are capable all on our own, thank you very much. But I would urge you to consider these four stages and see if you can deepen your practice of asking for help.

If you are intrigued by these ideas, I would also urge you to read The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer — an amazing memoir about an artist who took asking to its extreme. I read it years ago and it continues to inspire me and resonate with me. Perhaps it will you, too.