With a Little Help from My Friends

         I'm writing again!

         Big deal, you are thinking.  Isn't that what writers do? Well, yes, but if you've been following this blog for awhile, you  know that for the last year and a half, posting here is the only writing I have done.

      There are writers who can write from the death bed of a loved one. There are writers who wrote from their own deathbeds. I am not that strong. I am a wuss who gets creatively torpedoed by a lot of turmoil.

    So has my life smoothed out?  Has all the bad stuff gone away?

    I wish. Or, since you can't hear sarcasm in print...no.

    So what happened? 

      For some reason, my mind meandered back to when I was pondering potential motherhood. Would this be a good idea for me right now? (Eighteen years and one wild and crazy kid later, I still don't have the answer to that one.) I eventually realized that there was never going to be the perfect time. All I had was now. 

     The same goes for writing. All I have is now, even if it is a messy and stressful and depressing now. If my work comes out messy and depressing...well, that's what revision is for. Just getting it out of my head and into the physical world is the Big First Step.

    About the time I decided I had to write again, I learned that my local SCBWI spring conference featured a writer I really, really wanted to hear. In addition to not writing, I had also not been attending writing conferences.  I had signed up for a conference last fall, paid my fees, reserved my room.  Told friends I'd be there. Then on the day I was to leave, yet another one of those emotional emergencies smacked me down, leaving me without the energy to back out of my driveway, let alone drive four hundred miles in three days. But this conference, no matter what happened, was fifteen miles from my house. I could do this.

    I did it. I made it to the conference. I not only heard The Amazing Speaker I Had to Hear, but I reconnected with my critique group buddies.  They reminded me I always had a place at their table, no pressure, no judgment, no where have you been?  They were meeting in two weeks. Could I make it?

    I could...and did. I remembered why for ten years,  I had made that monthly 100 mile round trip to critique group.  Writing is a solitary pursuit. There is no break room or lunch hour to commiserate with your co-workers. (Well, there is Facebook, but it's not the same thing.) We have to find out ways to stay connected to each other. Blogging is one way. Conferences are another. Critique group however, is where you connect on the most intimate level. This is where your fellow writers are not afraid to tell you the ruth. As I said in a previous post on critique groups, you are not there to tear each other apart, or pat each other on the back. You are there for constructive criticism...and constructive praise. You learn that you aren't the only one with a funky life. You learn that you just grab on to and hang on. To keep writing messy stuff, that you will revise and revise until it is better.

     And some day, life will get better, too.

    Don't forget to enter our latest book giveaway.  You could win an autographed copy of Michelle Markel's and Melissa Sweet's Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirtwaist Makers Strike of 1909 (Balzer and Bray).  I have my own copy on the desk next to me right now. Terrific book.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

 

ThankU for. . .Buzzing Bees

     Conventional wisdom says that the friends you make in college are the ones you make for life, whether you are twenty, or firmly in middle-age.  I never expected to make twelve new BFF's in my forties, but I did.  My ThankU goes out to my Vermont College  MFA in Writing for Children classmates, Summer '00, aka "The Hive." These incredible writers have become a part of my life, both personally and professionally.  Who would have thought when we met in the luggage claim at the Burlington Airport, July 1998, that we still be the close-knit group we are today?
       I belong to a terrific critique group here in Georgia, all.  I am a member of  the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and through that organization I have writing friends all over the country. (If there is one thing we need in this solitary life we've chosen, it's friends who also write!) Yet none of these wonderful people have become part of my family, and I, theirs. Within the Hive, we know the status of each other's manuscripts.  We share our collective knowledge of editors, agents, publishers, and other writers. We have seen each other through the death of spouses and parents, pregnancy and illness.  Together we have shepherded our children from "the terrible twos" to the troublesome teens to college and marriage and another generation.

    At first meeting, we were as diverse a group as you could find, aged twenty-something to seventy-something, with most of us somewhere smack in the middle.  We came from all over the country, and just for something completely different, Thailand (that was me). In fact, had I not had my fellow "Bees" as close as my computer screen, I never would have survived my year and a half on the other side of the world.  I remember the Thanksgiving my husband was on assignment in China, and the Bees kept emailing me to keep me from being too homesick, alone in my Bangkok high rise with a four-year-old.

    When we came to Vermont College, differences in age, geography and previous publishing experience were forgotten.  What mattered is that we had the same desire…to become the best possible writer we could. So intense were we, hanging on our instructors' every word, that our class loomed large on the faculty radar.  We believe it was one of those instructors, Brock Cole, who inadvertently dubbed as "bees" because we fairly buzzed with questions and enthusiasm.  So, if individually we were Bees, together we were "The Hive."

     Not everyone in our class wished to maintain contact after graduation. Some members of the considerably smaller Winter '00 class wanted to be part of the Hive. We were honored that someone wanted to cast their lot with our busy bunch. It is hard to remember now when those two members were one of our number.

     When I tell other writers about The Hive, they always ask how often we hear from each other. They are amazed that the answer is "couple of times a day."  On the rare occasions that The Hive falls silent, someone (usually JoAnn) will send out an email on the order of "Where is everybody?" If one of us doesn't log in for a period of time, someone is sure to email (or even call) to make sure all is well.

    Because we are scattered across the country, we have never physically all been together in the same place, not even at graduation. (The two "Bee adoptees" graduated before us.) We have managed to get a good number of them together in one place for various reunions, but never all of us.  Still, we see each other more than most families do.  If one of us is speaking in a Bee's hometown, you can be sure that any Bee within a fifty mile radius will be there too.

    So...for all the manuscripts you've critiqued, rejection letters you've suffered through, rants about editors endured and professional connections made, my heartfelt ThankU goes out to the two Gretchens, the two Carolyns, Maribeth, Laura, Phyllis, April and Lindan. A special ThankU to Carmela, Jeanne Marie and JoAnn, my fellow TA's and Hive members. And through the TA connection, I have become friends with Esther and April.

   The Hive is the source that keeps on giving!

   Don't forget to send your ThankU's to us.  See Esther's last Wednesday post for details.

 Posted by Mary Ann Rodman