Mar 14, 2020 No comments Communities, Winterviews

Winterviews Communities: #TeamOptimism

To celebrate 13 weeks of winter, Winterviews is conducting interviews with various book and author communities across the internet. Once a week, we’ll interview a new community to find out what makes that community great.

Note: Our interviewee for this week ran into some struggles. But we hope to catch up either later this week or in early spring.

Join us on the hashtag #13Winterviews, or join in the fun with tonight’s community spotlight #TeamOptimism on twitter! Without further ado, lets get down to the interview!

Can you tell us a little bit about #TeamOptimism?

#TeamOptimism is a movement to make the tough parts of writing—rejection, waiting, and imposter syndrome—a little less painful by supporting writers with positivity and an optimistic attitude. Right now the admin team consists of founder S.M. Roffey, Jeni Chappelle, and K. J. Harrowick

What prompted the idea to start #TeamOptimism?

I was studying a lot about the idea of the brain being a muscle, and that the more optimistic and positive you can be, the more it “trains the brain” to think that way. I was also in the middle of my first #PitchWars contest, and as anyone who has entered knows, the waiting is the hardest part! So I began #TeamOptimism to both train my own brain and support my fellow writers with some positivity.

In what way has being a part of #TeamOptimism made you stronger as a professional?

It really has helped me to keep a positive attitude in the face of query rejections, pitch contests, and rewrites. The one thing I’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter how wonderful you write, every writer sees rejection at some point. Being able to share an optimistic gif or statement lets you connect with other writers who are going through the same thing at the same moment.

What three things does someone not know about you or #TeamOptimism?

The first is that I am definitely not Sally Sunshine for every minute of my day! The idea of #TeamOptimism isn’t that you have to be—it’s just a way to create moments that lift you up when you’re feeling all of those writer negatives. The second is that when I started #TeamOptimism two years ago, I was in a pretty bad place. It was actually a mental health professional who encouraged me to start reading about how to train your brain to be more optimistic. And the last one is something I’ve been keeping a secret! That the wonderful K. J. Harrowick is working on my website, which I’m so excited to say will include an actual page for #TeamOptimism, with tips for staying positive, self-care, and writer support

Any advice or quote that you live by?

Not so much a quote as a way of life—lifting other people up rather than knocking them down is incredibly important to who I am. It’s what drew me to Jeni Chappelle and K. J. Harrowick when I first decided to expand #TeamOptimism, because both are also intensely committed to lifting others up in the writing community. I felt like if I wanted #TeamOptimism to expand in its support of writers, I wanted to start with people who already know how to do that.

Website coming soon!
Twitter
#TeamOptimism
Twitter

Hosting Authors
S. M. Roffey
Jeni Chappelle
K. J. Harrowick

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