How to let people help you

There’s a woman standing in front of you as you get onto the airplane. She struggles even to lift her cabin bag to waist-height. There’s no way she can lift it into the space overhead. She keeps trying, stumbling around and blocking the aisle. You step forward to help her put it there, moved either by sympathy or a need for efficiency, but she refuses your help, wanting to do it herself.

I spent decades firm in the belief that you shouldn’t need help to travel. If you did, you should avail of the assistance (wheelchairs, elevators, porters etc.) but stay out of the path of those who could move at “regular” speed. It frustrated me when people spent two minutes just trying to get onto an escalator, or when they looked lost and confused standing in the middle of a busy street. 

Get out of my way, people.

Maybe it’s learning, with age, that things like sprains and joint pain aren’t just for senior citizens, or settling, after enough travel, into the wisdom that the journey is just as much to be enjoyed as the destination, but something clicked for me when a colleague asked, “Have you ever been part of a real team? One where you know you can’t actually do what you want without other people?”

At that point, I’d been part of many teams. Some of them were exceptionally well-run, where people supported each other fully and came together in crises, and worked with the kind of efficiency that makes your heart race with delight. But the criteria for entry into those teams was individual excellence; you had to already be a superhero to join the Avengers. You could trust that each person on the team could pull their weight. They would never block the aisle.

But—and here’s the rub—that’s not true partnership. Even in college, I preferred to work alone. Only for a couple of classes that required you to have a partner, I chose someone who operated the way I did. With a clear contract about who did what by when, and the calm of knowing they could do their part. We were both A students who wanted the A+. We didn’t need each other. 

There’s something about the way need is viewed in Western culture that I had internalized without realizing it. It’s a weakness, a vulnerability, something shameful that’s suddenly on display. And, of course, it’s feminine—playing into all the stereotypes about women whose bodily functions control them, who need help because they’re menstruating, lactating, crying or bleeding.

It turns out that I had only ever been part of one true partnership: the creation of The Night Wolves. It wouldn’t even have occurred to me to write a comic. In my mind, the logic was simple. I can’t draw, so I can’t make comics. If it wasn’t for my partner, I wouldn’t even have known where to start. The fact that we managed, in the middle of a pandemic, to create something at all, that too with a team of all women from Hong Kong, Russia and Ukraine, says more about her than me. While she can draw, she had the humility to know that her physical injuries would prevent her from being the primary artist. She also knew how to rely on others.

Delegating isn’t the same thing, although it might seem like it at first glance. But delegation is an imbalance of power, one person handing off simpler tasks or problems to someone more junior or inexperienced. A win-win! One person gets more time, the other gets to learn. I’m not knocking delegation generally; you can’t progress in your career without learning how to do it. But you’ll plateau again unless you can move from delegation to partnership.

Real partnership requires vulnerability and a genuine desire for interdependence over independence. It’s something I struggle with, as a woman and an immigrant, as if I’ve already accepted that nobody will help, or if they do, it’ll be transactional—they’ll want something in return, or they’ll confirm a bias that “people like me” always need support. This is the real fear: that we are a drain on resources that belong to others.

I’ve been practicing partnership more and more, especially with Her Golden Coast. Asking for help, learning to see a 50% success rate not as “half these people are mad at me for asking them something” but as “half these people have my back and want me to succeed.” It’s humbling and moving, but also profoundly unsettling to my sense of self. (In a good way: the world needs more interdependence). 

Yesterday, there were over 100 people reading an advance copy of Her Golden Coast on NetGalley. To explain how absurd this is, it’s rare that a book has 2 advance readers, unless it comes with a giant marketing push from the publisher. So many books get published every month, nobody cares about yours. But reviews on advance copies can make or break a book, can push it to Bestseller status or damn it to obscurity, or worse, an online hate-mob. So why does my book have 100+ readers? Fortunately, NetGalley offers some useful stats:

The description and the cover, neither of which were my doing. Rob Eagar, who runs a course on mastering Amazon for authors, says that most authors think they know how to describe their book, and they’re wrong. The description has to appeal to the specific market for that book, has to hook them while providing social proof. I used a company he referred me to, Best Page Forward, for the content, while author friends provided the blurbs.

Similarly, most authors think they know what makes a good cover, and they’re wrong. A good cover, one that’s daring and aesthetically pleasing, doesn’t always convey the elements of genre that the reader needs to make a decision about the book. Does that mean all thriller covers must look the same? YES. They need to set reader expectations within the span of an Amazon thumbnail. Again, I had friends help with choosing my book’s cover, knowing my own tastes were likely wrong. It is currently the highest rated cover in the multicultural genre, and among the Most Requested books there.

Some of you are on NetGalley, but if you’re not, subscribers should be able to get a free advance copy to read via either BookSprout or BookSirens. (Deep breath) I could really use your help getting reviews on Amazon and GoodReads.

I’m learning to trust other people, not just with the simple stuff (delegation) but with the hard, important stuff. It’s difficult, but ultimately rewarding–a few days ago, a visiting friend from marketing helped me write a pitch, and the process was so inspiring that I actually got a whole new novel idea from it. 

Still carrying my own suitcase though.