I’m having an unusually quiet (writing) week, listening to the noise of a hammer and a radio playing on the lawn as workers repair my porch. I could write during the racket, interspersed with the sounds of traffic and occasional voices passing on the sidewalk. But instead I’m marveling at how clear my to-do list is. This summer, instead of planning to get the Crime Spell Books anthology out the door to KDP in September, it’s almost ready to go—in August. I have time to work on a short story and the sixth Anita Ray mystery. How did this happen, I ask?
Over the last several years, I’ve trimmed my volunteer activities, cutting back on responding to last-minute requests for help, or invitations to join another committee. But as I see blocks of time open up and think of things I’ve put off and can now get to, I’m reminded of something else. I didn’t get here on my own. I had help.
The one key reason I continue to volunteer for various groups devoted to writers and writing, artists and their mediums, is I believe in the importance of sharing what I know with others. When I started out writing, back in the 1980s and even earlier, in college, friends read my work and offered suggestions. That meant they took time for me. I joined a writer’s group, the first of several, and listened carefully to how they commented on each other’s work in a way that was clear and respectful, and vowed to always do the same. I went to classes, asked questions, offered to help organize workshops, and read other writers’ work. As my skills improved, and I began to publish short fiction and then novels, I was invited to participate on conference panels. I read and commented on work by writers I didn’t know, wrote reviews, composed blurbs. I enjoyed it all.
The kind of volunteer work I do with and for other writers has changed over the years. My initial modest reader responses to someone’s new story has now been replaced with a critique of how a panel will work with these writers or those, who brings what to the table and how will the writers complement each other. I refer new writers to agents I think will like their work, I advise writers interested in self-publishing what that will mean (or not mean).
I think it matters that writers share what they have learned on their own or from others, participate in the larger community, and help bring along new writers. We benefit from working with each other. Even during my college years, when I worked on the student humor magazine, I understood that to succeed, we had to work with each other. That has never not been true in all the years since. I’ve enjoyed watching new writers find their voice, an agent, a publisher; established writers try something new; others take a risk and stretch themselves. That “top of the heap” some strive for is not a peak; it’s a mesa. There’s a lot of room at the top, or whatever we call it. Sharing it with others is more fun than standing there alone.
Ladies of Mystery 