Herding Cats

I've seen it done, in cartoons. It's that symbolically difficult bringing together that has become an easy throwaway line.

It's also often compared to organizing writers.

We like to think of ourselves as all strong-minded individualistic souls who refuse to compromise, who go our own way, who go where no man has gone before and do it better, faster, harder, stronger. We like to think of ourselves as isolated, the starving writer in his dark office churning out small bright gems to change the world.

We're all fantasists.

Every novel in production is a team effort: author, editor, publisher, agent, designer, printer and everyone in between. Anthologies and magazines and writers' societies and guilds and federations and forums and support networks even more so. Group blogs, too. They all require cooperation and communication and consideration. And they happen, every day, which rather negates the statement that organizing writers is like herding cats: with purpose, pettiness can be set aside, because glittering results are all that matter.