Lost in my own world

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness. -Charles H. Spurgeon


Hello Again,

After weeks of being absent from the blog, I am back again. Did you miss me? Life was seemingly spinning out of control for a while and now things are starting to settle down a bit. The close of the week has been excellent, although I am nursing a pretty nasty sunburn on my face from today’s outing.

I live in Hawai’i and I am a triathlete, albeit not a very good one, and I raced the North Shore Triathlon today. I do my best “writing” when I am out on a run or during a swim. My mind is free from distractions and can wander as far as it likes. Today, however, I was distracted from my usual creative reverie. I finished dead last in my age group, but I was helping a friend through the swim and I went verra verra slow for her. I even stopped a few times when she was having bike trouble - she clipped a guy coming out of transition and then couldn’t get into her pedals. Once she was stable on the bike she took off like a flash and I did not see her again. She finished 181st and I humbly stumbled in at 250th or so. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

Luckily, in the writing world my writing friends are always there to support me. We have a very stellar group of writers in my opinion, and there are some of us, who I suspect will have their MIPs picked up for publishing very soon. I would never want any of my AOTP buds to slow down and wait for me. I want them to press ahead and succeed. So what happens after publication? Will the dynamics of our group change? Will our stellar writers have the time to give suggestions, chat about Harry Potter theories, or to lend a helping hand with personal issues? I wonder how other writing groups have handled this transition with the demands of a newly published or contracted writer.

I cannot speak for all writing groups, as they are all as different as the individuals that make up their membership, but I think I can speak for us. I think AOTP would always have time for the friends that we made as budding writers. Our support and love has helped guide each of us on our journey to success and we would miss each other so much if one of us chose to move on. I guess as long as we continue to grow as writers, we can still be an asset to each other professionally as well as personally. Published or not.

So, this sunburned girl learned a valuable lesson today, support your friends, but always press ahead.