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There’s a time-honored, romantic image of authors: the solitary genius who lives within the rich worlds in their heads, pecking away at their keyboard in their little attic hideaway or stolen corner of their home, or sitting alone at a busy coffeeshop insulated from the bustle around them with heads bent over their laptops, lost in their own imagination.

In almost all cases the recurring motif is solitude, the artist making their art in isolation, the pure act of creation that springs from one singular soul.

And yet how far that image is from the reality of the making of art—and the business of it.

I think as creatives we tend to feel we have to go it alone, that everything rests on our own shoulders, and in many ways that is true. The bulk of the work is always going to be ours. But you don’t have to do it in isolation.

In fact, I’d argue that you can’t.

Who Is Your Village?

Many of us talk a lot about our writing communities and how important they are, and I wholly agree with that. I’m not not talking about your fellow writers, but that’s not only what I’m talking about either.

Think about where you are in your writing—whether that’s standing at the starting gate trying your hand at story for the first time or well down the track in an established career. What—and most important, who—helped bring you to this point? Who keeps you going, and makes it possible for you to continue your journey?

If I think back in my career to what landed me here, making a very happy living as an editor, educator, and writer, the path is populated by countless people who helped move me down the road: from my mom, who took me to the library as often as I wanted to go to get me an endless supply of books, to the writers of those books I devoured, whose voice and imagination and skill brought them alive and awakened my passion for story.

My high school AP English teacher, Connie Corley, taught me what made good writing effective, and encouraged me to find my unique voice and approach in my own—just as Frank Walgren, the first in-house editor who ever hired me as a freelance proofreader and copyeditor, helped me learn the craft of editing, reviewing my early edits and showing me what I’d missed, where I could improve, how to find my style as an editor.

And as I did, he passed my name along to editors he knew at other publishing houses…and later each of those editors passed my name along to others, until I found myself working for most of the Big Six (at the time)—a feat I might never have achieved without the help and support of every one of those people.

When e-books upended the publishing industry and electronic editing first crept onto the scene, it was my tech-forward husband who pushed me to learn it, despite my fear and resistance to a new technology—even when most of the publishers I worked with were dragging their feet about transitioning from the old-fashioned paper way of working. That kept me ahead of the curve in my industry so that when everything inevitably went electronic, I was the early adopter who stayed in demand.

When I wanted to try my hand at developmental editing and my old demon impostor syndrome set in, once again it was my husband—the greatest support system I’ve ever had—who helped me find the confidence and courage to make the leap. That was the first data point in what became a pattern, as my geeky spouse likes to say. Every time I have made a shift in my business or attempted something new or try to expand in some challenging way, he has been behind me reminding me of what I have done and what I can do, filling me with confidence when my flag falters.

And he is far from the only person who has helped me—who continues to help me. The first author to take a chance on me as an untried developmental editor was Sarah Bird, whom I’d met after copyediting one of her books. She told every writer she knew how pleased she was with my work, and bam—instant credibility, and my client list grew.

My old critique group, the Penheads, made me a better writer, and pushed me to keep submitting when I wanted to give up after more than 100 unsuccessful queries. I got my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan of Handspun Literary, on query 113—and she became yet another member of Team Tiffany, shepherding my novels from a promising small publisher to Penguin Random, one of the Big Five—where yet more people invested their time and energy and resources in me and my career, not to mention every reader who bought or reviewed the books.

I continued to learn my writing craft from editors at the newspaper where I worked as a freelance features journalist (shoutout to you, Harriet Heithaus and Kevin Hellyer!), who pushed me to be better even when I thought I was giving my best. I hone it with every insightful edit I receive when writing for magazines and outlets, from talented, sharp-eyed editors like Amy Jones and Moriah Richard at Writer’s Digest, or Therese Walsh at Writer Unboxed.

It is potent stuff to have other people believe in and support you, and we all deserve it and can seek it out. We can learn to see where we may already be benefiting from support we may have been blind to, or to accept it when it’s offered, or to ask for it when we need it.

I continue to hone my editing craft thanks to working with publishing-house editors at the top of their game, and from every single author who entrusts me to edit their manuscript. And I’ve been given a helping hand by so many others in our industry, those who teach me, who offer opportunities, who extend my reach in this business far beyond what I could accomplish on my own, who share the benefit of their own experience and knowledge—teachers and benefactors and cheerleaders and mentors too numerous to count (and I hope every one of you knows who you are).

Not only do you not have to walk the often hard road of your creative career alone, but it’s all but impossible to do so.

My husband and I always have to hide our smiles when we hear someone described as self-made. There’s no such thing in any walk of life. We are all recipients of largesse in some fashion. Every one of us relies on and benefits from support and aid and assistance, if nothing else from the people who have come before us and created the infrastructure in which we’re building our own careers, and who forged the paths that make ours a little easier.

Walk Your Path, but Not Alone

It’s true that writing can often feel isolating, solitary, even lonely. So much of this career boils down to one butt in one seat working on your own singular stories.

I am a firm believer and proselytizer that we must all be our own champion, and that’s true, especially in a fairly self-driven and often isolating business like the creative arts. And often what propels a writer to success is a bedrock of self-motivation, hard work to expand their abilities and talent and knowledge, and a core belief in the worth of their stories.

But friends, I’m betting even Muhammad Ali wouldn’t have been as successful as he was without the people in his corner of the ring. It is potent stuff to have other people believe in and support you, and we all deserve it and can seek it out. We can learn to see where we may already be benefiting from support we may have been blind to, or to accept it when it’s offered, or to ask for it when we need it.

No one can walk through those doors for you, but other people can hold your hand all the way up to them, be waiting for you when you come out the other side. A lot of times, as with my husband, they can show you where a door is that you might never have seen on your own. They can even crack it open for you, as so many in my industry have been kind enough to do for me—and in turn you can do the same for others.

But you must have the agency of walking through them, and sometimes finding a way past what seems like an impregnable lock, or, as I joke much of my career has been, go look for a back door to sneak in another way.

Create your own safety net. Seek out those people who will be in your corner. Give back to others and be in their corner, too—networks are stronger the more they’re interconnected.

Creativity cannot thrive in a vacuum. If truly limited to our own individual selves our art is impoverished, robbed of its richness, its life—and from so much of the connection and camaraderie that gives it meaning.

Authors, I want to hear your own award-speech version of the people who have helped you along your path. Who offers you support, inspiration, insight, education, companionship, opportunity? How do you seek out and create a strong, powerful support network for yourself? And what do you do to give back and help support others?

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