Writers serve their community. Actually, a good way to connect with your audience is to be of service because many writers are also future readers.

Some writers go beyond the usual networking and offer unique services to other writers. Brooke McIntyre is one of them. She helps connect writers with critique partners. She helps writers meet with agents and editors.

What drew me into her community was the opportunity to ask questions to professionals who might be otherwise hard to access. Brooke does not hesitate to work personally with you. She will take you by the hand, present you to other writers, and make sure you are connected to the right group.

Brooke McIntyre writes children’s picture books and some poetry. She doesn’t have an author’s website yet, but she has Inked Voices, a community for writers. And I am so excited to welcome her on The Winged Pen.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InkedVoicesLLC/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/InkedVoices

Blog (this is new, new): http://blog.inkedvoices.com/

 

Sussu: Who are you, Brooke? What is your motto?

Brooke: Words to me are connection. To family, to myself and to the world. As a child, words were time spent one-on-one with my parents and especially my dad, who worked long days. Reading was a salve, helping me feel understood. It was also a portal to magical places. I started writing as a teenager to make sense of the world. Words, read or written, play versions of these roles for me today. Connection, and so, discovery.

I believe life is short and we should grab it and make a difference as best we can during our brief stint here. I believe in people and think we have an amazing opportunity to help one another realize our potentials.

 

Sussu: Why and when did you start Inked Voices? Did the project interfere with your writing?

Brooke: I started Inked Voices in 2013 as a solution for my personal critique group. We were exchanging manuscripts over email and critiquing with Google Docs and it felt disjointed and disorganized. I wanted a space where we could come together more collaboratively. I’m a very process-oriented person –it’s the same part of my mind that led me to my MBA—and I could see a better way. And so I started sketching it out on paper that summer. I reached out to writers and writing group organizers to get their feedback and tweaked the idea, working iteratively until I was satisfied. Then, in the fall I hired developers and started translating the idea into the tangible site it is today. The beta launched in the spring of 2014.

Before Inked Voices, I worked full-time in business-to-business marketing and strategy. Because I went from one full-time something to another, the amount of time I spent writing didn’t change. I was always writing in the margins. But starting Inked Voices allowed me to be surrounded by reading and writing—just where I wanted to be.

Now a few years in, I write much more than I did before and with consistency. I have to credit the women I’ve been working with in two different accountability groups on the site with that. The groups gave me the structure I needed to commit the time I wanted to.

 

Sussu: What skills did you need to build the server and advertise the site? On a scale of 1 to 10, how hard was it?

Brooke: Inked Voices is parts technology and parts community. Both of these are hugely important, but require different skill sets.

On the tech side, I knew I didn’t want a forum, but a web application built for the workshopping process. Inked Voices would allow writing groups to share work, exchange critiques and hold discussions in a single virtual workspace. This implied a custom-built web application.

To accomplish this, front and backend coding were required, as were design skills and project management. There were three months of full-time development before any writer saw the site, and development continues to this day. For a web application, it’s helpful to understand Agile development, which is a system of continuous innovation for tech. We make incremental improvements based on writer feedback and my vision. I manage our tech projects. With this, I conceptualize features in sketches, design process flows, and work with writers to understand their goals and translate them into capabilities. Our developers contribute their expertise and create the next build.

On the community side, skills in engagement, mentoring and coaching are important. I do a lot of one-on-one matching of writers with groups, and so networking, or facilitating connections, is another important skill.

To start something new, whether tech or not, you do not need to be able to do all the parts, but you do need to understand them and ensure things are done. What is easy or hard will vary depending on one’s own strengths and personal challenges.

Doing this has taken a lot of grit. Things go wrong and when you are so invested – time, finances and heart –it is more than tough. It can take a toll personally and on one’s family. But I go back to the joy of creating, building and connecting. The tenacity –just as in writing—is in the continued revision.

 

Sussu: You contact agents, writers, and editors. How do you contact them? Do you get a lot of rejections? 

Brooke: Agents and editors do critiques in our online First Pages events and sometimes they give talks for us as well. I research in advance and often work via referrals, either from agents who have done First Pages with Inked Voices in the past, or from our writers who may have met the person at a conference. I look for editorial agents and those who are strong teachers and mentors.

Sending an email is usually easiest. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to see the person speak and I will approach them after. When I first started, the process was a bit scary – who was I to do this? But the format has been awesome for both writers and agents and so my lack of confidence has faded. It is a matter of fit: what is the person acquiring and interested in coaching? What are the places I am trying to fill? How booked is the person’s schedule?

 

Sussu: What did you learn from creating this site? 

Brooke: There are so many levels to this question and the truth of things is that I learn something new every day. This is the first venture I’ve undertaken, and while I’ve had the background training in business and management-level experience, putting all the pieces together is a different matter. It seems easier on paper. J

From an expertise perspective, I’ve become very comfortable with the tech development process through work on Inked Voices and our writing tracker app Ink On. I’ve also learned much about building strong writing groups by working with writers, and observing successful and failed groups. Inked Voices is a 70-group strong learning lab.

I get the most joy from connecting with people individually and connecting others together. Perhaps the biggest lesson is one in humanity. I am humbled at the commitment, passion and belief that many of our writers bring to their work. I am inspired by what writers give in the way of their time and hearts to support other writers. And I feel too aware of the terrible challenges that people go through in their lives, that impact them as writers, as people. With that awareness, I try as much as possible to assume good intentions and give people the benefit of the doubt.

It goes back to connection. And I am lucky to be able to connect with writers through this medium.

 

If you liked this article, please connect to Sussu Leclerc on her website: Novel Without Further Ado, on Twitter: @bookriders1, and on Pinterest: bookriders1.