comments?

I love to read blogs, particularly writing and publishing blogs.  I like reading about the experiences of other writers, and I particularly like learning the tricks of the publishing trade.  Publishing is an alien world to me, and I have come to appreciate the openness with which many literary agents and bloggers share their expertise with publishing hopefuls like me.

I don't, however, like to comment on blogs.

It isn't because I have nothing to say.  I have plenty of thoughtful, reflective, funny, engaging, and even wise things to say (as I tell myself when I am dreaming about writing).  Yet as every true introvert knows, once you enter the crowded room, even if the crowded room looks like 235 comments from other readers, your well-prepared ideas and reflections leave you standing open-mouthed.  

One of my favorite blogs, Write To Done, had a guest post earlier this week from the A-List Blogger Club, a group of blogging experts who have formed a club to mentor new blog writers.  Guest writer Mary Jaksch of Goodlife ZEN offered readers a scholarship of $20 a month to join.  All that is required is to write a response in the comment section that convinces the A-List Blogger Club that you are one of the top five people who deserve it.

How loaded is that?  First I have to believe I am good enough (who ever believes that?).  Then I have to enter that "crowded room" and push past my natural tendency to quiet myself, to listen rather than speak.  All this before my response even begins to pass whatever invisible hoops the A-List Blogger Club has in mind when selecting the scholarship recipients. 

I'm not complaining here.  As a blogger, I so appreciate the very few who have commented on my words.  I go back and read them again and again, so I can only imagine how encouraging it is to those who get so many comments.  Good for them, I say.

I'm just trying to think through the resistance.  My solution today is to just write my thoughts here instead, and to seriously consider just paying the fee and joining the club.  I bet they can help.

A very wise young woman once told me that the best way to work a room is to go to one person at a time and start a conversation.  Maybe I'll try that too.

And I just want to point out that this is the first time I have ever named myself as a blogger.  Just saying ... progress slips right up on us when we aren't looking.

the value of community

I am an author.

I am an author, a writer who has not written for a month.

There is a blank page.  It is patient. It never beckons or berates.  It waits for words.

I circle and touch and retreat and forget and remember and circle again.

It waits ... I rationalize.

I got a job.  A great job.  A job that makes me smile as I drive the 40 miles one way each day to get there.  A job that is only part-time (supposedly) and should give me plenty of time to write.

I've been busy with other things also.  My grandson thought it was a great idea to have a cookout one Sunday after church.  This idea became a weekend ritual for the grandchildren ... swimming in the pool and pouring themselves out of the water to feast on hotdogs, fresh cucumbers and cantelope from the garden, and cupcakes. 

These things take time. 

Time from writing.

I don't think busyness is the culprit here.  I think instead the difference may be that my writing group has not met in a month.  Not since our author reading in fact, and I miss them. 

I miss thinking about writing after hearing interesting, curious events described in their stories each week.  I miss the sense of having a deadline to finish a story.  Not that anyone in my writing group cares if I miss a deadline, but because they so appreciate what I bring to our reading table and encourage me to bring more.  I miss the conversation before and after our meetings, and I miss thinking about what each of them might bring next to educate, entertain and inspire.  Will it be an adventurous sailing story?  Or an unexpected epiphany teased from the memory of one's past?  Or simple entertainment in the telling of interactions with plants, animals, and human beings in yards, homes, parking lots, road trips, nail salons and myriad other settings? 

Thankfully, my writing community is reuniting again this week.

Shhh ... it feels a bit like a secret we shouldn't tell, but we are gathering again this week to receive copies of the first printing of our new book, Scenes from the Rear View Mirror.

We are authors, and we have written a book, the first of many we will publish either in partnership with one another or individually as we continue to follow our writing dreams.

I look forward to seeing the completed book, but most of all I look forward to seeing these women who by chance became my writing partners.  For this community, I am beyond grateful.