Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage, How To Write the Future podcast, ep 227

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Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage – How To Write the Future podcast, ep. 227 

“I realized I had to accelerate the pace. And I’ve seen this in other mediums with other people in completely different domains. If you wanna get better at something, hit the publish button.“ – Beth Barany 

In this How To Write the Future podcast episode, titled “Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage” host Beth Barany shares how joining a supportive writing community can help advance you from first draft to published novel by receiving the right critique, building upon others successes, and discovering your healthy motivator to keep writing.

Beth’s raw honesty reflecting on the the successes she saw others achieve and how that motivated her to accelerate her own writing journey will be refreshing to hear.

Beth also shares about her 12-month Edit Mastermind group and monthly Edit Lab membership.

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About the How To Write the Future podcast 

The How To Write The Future podcast is for science fiction and fantasy writers who want to write positive futures and successfully bring those stories out into the marketplace. Hosted by Beth Barany, science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. We cover tips for fiction writers. This podcast is for readers too if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

This podcast is for you if you have questions like:

– How do I create a believable world for my science fiction story?

– How do I figure out what’s not working if my story feels flat?

– How do I make my story more interesting and alive?

This podcast is for readers, too, if you’re at all curious about the future of humanity.

Transcript for Writing Community: Your Secret Publishing Advantage 

Writing Is a Community Effort 

BETH BARANY: In my opinion, we may write alone, but actually we are writers in community. 

We actually aren’t in isolation. If you’re watching this on video, look at all the books around me. Yes, you’ll see some of my books, but there are a ton of books that aren’t mine. 

I’m gonna lift my laptop here and just show you some of them.

And yes, there is a stack of my journals in there as well. Tons of books. Also client books and j- just so many books. It’s really easy to feel isolated as a writer. It is part of the relationship we’re having with ourselves when we’re writing. But actually to succeed as a writer- and by success I mean, for me, it meant being published.

For you, success might mean something else. So what does success look like for you? And I’m gonna be very insistent that you’re gonna get there with community. 

Alone, you may never get there. You may, but it’s very, very rare. Human beings are social creatures, and actually, we thrive in community. That said, I know community can sometimes be problematic.

[01:13] The Challenges of Community Critique 

It can be confronting when someone holds up a mirror to you to show you what you’re doing from their perspective. If people give you critique, some- not everybody gives critique in a compassionate, useful way. 

I work hard to do compassionate, constructive cr- critique so that you can improve on your writing, and that’s what I do with my clients and inside of my two writing groups, which I will tell you about a little bit toward the end.

And also it can be very painful to see other writers succeeding in a way that you wish that you were.

So I have been in one form of writing group or another since I decided to dedicate myself to fiction writing 28 years ago. I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time seeing myself, and I know that when I’m in community, especially small groups, but also can be big groups, I get to hear what other people are doing, see what they’re doing, decide if I want that, and it, it motivates me.

[02:11] Using Envy as Motivation 

In the past, I have definitely been envious or jealous of what other people have and what other people are doing, and for me, that always spurs me into action. 

I somehow learned pretty early on how to use my envy and my jealousy to recognize, ” Oh, they have what I want. What can I do to get there?

What are they doing that I’m not doing that I can use in my own life to get to where I wanna go as an author? I saw authors being bestsellers. 

I saw authors being very prolific and putting out book after book.

Seemed to be a correlation between being able to become a bestseller in a very specific niche and, in that case, it was romance at the time- and become a bestseller.

Now, of course, luck played a role. They were very clear about that. And hard work. They were very clear about that, too. I also noticed I lacked confidence, and the only way I knew from past experience in other domains of my life, the only way to gain confidence is to take action. Really, that is the only way.

[03:14] The Difference That Makes a Difference 

Confidence comes from experience, and experience comes from doing the thing.

So there’s another question that I learned in my NLP training, neuro-linguistic programming training, that my trainers would say, and I was taken aback by this question because I had never heard anyone else ask this, and that is: What is the difference that makes a difference?

When I would see writers succeeding in ways that I wanted to succeed, what was the difference there that made the difference for them, that made all the difference?

 Embedded in this question is also sometimes it’s something small or insignificant that is the difference that makes a difference. What’s amazing about this question is your brain will scurry off and look for what is the difference that makes the difference.

Try it. Try it on. If you see someone doing something that you wish you could be doing or that you wish you had, ask that question. See what comes up. 

So for me personally, the biggest difference that I mention, and I mentioned this earlier, is that they were writing more and publishing more. So in a span of time, they would write more and publish more.

[04:22] Publish More, Faster 

And I realized I had to accelerate the pace. And I’ve seen this in other mediums with other people in completely different domains. If you wanna get better at something, hit the publish button. 

Maybe you’re not so comfortable releasing your novels right now; maybe write shorter novellas, short stories, that kind of thing.

If you are craving publishing but none of your stories are ready, I recommend blog posts or videos, or audios. Substack is a great medium to experiment on. So what I actually did was when I w- noticed my romance author colleagues having the kind of success I wanted, and I asked myself, “What is the difference that makes a difference?”

[05:05] The Gargoyle That Sparked a Novella Series

I realized that I needed to publish more, more often. So and then because I made that decision, I was searching for a project, and then a circumstance happened. I actually happened to be traveling in France, and I saw this amazing gargoyle sitting on the edge of a cathedral, not attached to the cathedral building but, like, on, on the wall of a cathedral that looked very odd.

And I was just taken by it. I’m like, “What is the story of this cathedral that looks so odd?” 

And I’ve been an amateur student of the way cathedrals have been built in France, having lived there a few times, and I was just taken by how strange this cathedral was. So I took a picture of it, I put it up on social media, and I said, what if there’s a story around this gargoyle?

And then my critique partner saw that. I work with two other women in a critique group now for nearly 20 years, and one of them said, “Well, what if we all wrote romances that involved a gargoyle in some way?” And we all got excited about it, and we all did it, and we published it in a little anthology of three stories, one by each of us, about our gargoyles.

Now, that book is no longer published because we took it down and put out our own versions of these stories. And mine is now called Touchstone of Love, the first book in my Touchstone series.

And that actually sparked me to write short, so it was my first published novella. I went on to write four more novellas, and I published five novellas in two years.

And, and then I ended up writing a short story that’s in a collection, where I compiled the first four. I published in print the first four novellas plus the short story, and then I also published in print the fifth novella. And they’re, of course, they’re all e-books as well. And I also wrote a full-length novel that follows those stories that is still unpublished, but it’ll come out at some point soon.

[06:57] What This Experience Taught Me 

So what did I learn from this experience?

Being in community really showed me what I wanted and helped me and spurred me on. And I admit, I am egged on by… It’s, it’s like a friendly competition for me. 

Now that’s just my story about one particular example around community. I invite you to join a writing community.

[07:20] Introducing Edit Lab and Edit Mastermind

Get active in-person communities, online communities. Yes, I also offer two different kinds of communities. I have Edit Lab, which is $10 a month. You can show up once a month. We will look at 200 words of yours. It’s just for science fiction and fantasy writers. 

We do a little writing. We do Q&A and I deliver premium audios just for you. 

These premium audios, you can access them wherever you already get your podcasts.

And then the other group I have is an Edit Mastermind, also just for science fiction and fantasy authors. There, I do require that you have finished your first draft, whereas in the Edit Lab you don’t have to have finished your first draft.

You’re welcome to join whenever you feel ready, and that’s an ongoing monthly membership.

For the Edit Mastermind, on the other hand, you do need to have finished your first draft. Crappy first draft, totally fine. And there’s an application process for joining this Edit Mastermind because it is a 12-month commitment.

Yes, indeed, a 12-month commitment. I’m looking for people who really want to be novelists, no matter how long it takes. In the 12 months, I will help you learn how to edit your novel, get it to the next version, ideally so that you can hand it off to beta readers. And within our group, you will be able to bring your material to the group in a rotating basis.

[08:45] Inside the Edit Mastermind Program 

We feature one author per time. It’s again 250 to 300 words, and it’s a 90-minute call where you learn, you do some freewriting, you help other writers, you look at their works. You’re also learning how to critique. 

And there’s two teachers, me and my husband, two sessions a month, with a targeted, in-depth lesson to support your learning.

People tell me it’s like getting an MFA. You’re working on your own book. You’re not reading other people’s books.

[09:16] Craft, Marketing, and Working Authors 

We teach you everything around craft, story, character development, as well as help you start thinking about marketing your novel. How do you write a tagline? How do you write a book description?

How do you write a query letter? If you’re self-publishing, what goes into a cover? What kind of marketing plan might you wanna develop? So our focus is the deep dive into the editing process. 

The program is 12 months because it took you a long time to write the book. It’s gonna take you some time to learn how to edit your novel.

Now, if you already have some experience, maybe you have one or two manuscripts under your belt, you are still welcome to join us, as long as whatever book you’re working on, you come to the group with it finished.

Now, people in the group also are working on new projects all the time as well, and so am I, and so is Ezra, my husband.

So we are working authors demonstrating for you what does it look like to be an author who’s working on material all the time, whether you’re writing, editing, or getting ready to publish. 

In 12 months, can you publish a novel? Sure, and we encourage you to do that. That means that you are coming to the group, you’re coming to the twice-monthly meetings, and this group also comes with a meeting with me every month, where I will look at up to 20 manuscript pages per month and do a deep dive for you into those pages so that you can improve your writing quickly.

This group is for you if you’re ready to work with a small group of dedicated writers with two experienced teachers and bring your book beta reader ready, editor ready, and publishing ready. 

All right, so that is my spiel, my little ad there. Whatever you do, writers, get yourself to a writing community.

[11:02] Closing Thoughts 

That is how you will improve more quickly. 

And if you’re having some challenges around giving and receiving critique, well, let me know. I have material on that that I can share with you. 

All right, That’s it for this week, everyone. Write long and prosper.

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ABOUT BETH BARANY

Beth Barany

Beth Barany is an award-winning fantasy and science fiction novelist and creativity coach for writers. They help novelists write, revise, and publish stories that matter—blending practical craft guidance with a big-picture commitment to imagination, meaning, and possibility. 

 

Learn more about Beth Barany at these sites: 

 

Author site /  Coaching site / School of Fiction / Writer’s Fun Zone blog

CONNECT 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BethBarany

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethbarany/

Email: Beth@BethBarany.com

CREDITS 

c 2026 BETH BARANY

https://bethbarany.com/

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