Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Clubs?

What is the first thing that connects you to a person when you have just met? Similarities.

It is possible to maintain a relationship between two people that are very different from one other, but every relationship always has a foundation: something you have in common that you fall back on when things get hard. If you have nothing to fall back on, the relationship dissipates. Together you can keep a common interest alive. For this reason, many authors and writers strongly suggest keeping company with other writers as often and as much as possible. Sometimes they are the only ones who can give you the accountability you need to keep your writing on schedule and help you push through a writer's block.

I know from experience that it can be hard to get family and friends to understand why you are having a bad day when you cannot, for the life of you, come up with anything to write, or why you might burst into tears upon finding a whole chapter accidentally deleted, or why you would run around yelling at the top of your lungs when you finish a manuscript (the feeling is akin to discovering a cure for cancer.) To illustrate these diverse emotions I shall now share a link with you that might just make your day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aly7bSv6xUs

Though non-writers might do their best to sympathize and rejoice with you, sometimes the only one who understands a writer is another writer.

I am blessed to know several fellow writers, but they tend to be spread out through my life and I do not have the opportunity to visit with them often enough. For this reason I am starting a book/writer's club with as many of them as I can! For some time now I have been discussing the idea of starting the club with my sister in-law (she is a writer as well and recently had a beautiful baby girl, my first niece!) but we talked without doing much about it. However, this month, May, 2011, we have vowed to start it!

Having opportunities like these simply to talk about writing is enough to get me worked up with words. They beg, nay, they demand to be written!

Do you know any writers personally? Do you meet regularly with them or wish you did? Have you ever belonged to a club?