There is a lovely bottle of pinot grigio chilling in my fridge that is just waiting for me to fill up a glass... however, while it is still a bit early for me to start pouring - it is the perfect time to prepare my toast! And today I am raising my glass in acknowledgement of the importance of having a community of writers you can go to, not just for critiques, but for comfort and hopefully one day - celebration.
The two places where I have found a writing home are the Query Tracker Community and Passionate Critters.
The former I found through the actual Query Tracker site when I first began my agent search. I cannot say enough good thing about the Query Tracker main site and the forum. Both are incredibly user-friendly in completely different ways. Although this site has been active for only a little over a year - you would never know it. The layout and simplicity of its functions clearly show that a lot of thought was put into its design - and updates are constantly being made to keep the quality consistently high. On the forum end of things are an eclectic group of writers from different places in their lives and careers, but what they all have in common is their willingness to share their knowledge with someone new. It was with this group of people that my previous blog chain posting was arranged - and reading through them this past week made me realize how lucky I am to have fallen in with such good company.
Speaking of good company... just a few months ago I became a member of the Passionate Critters. However, like my Query Tracker forum the Passionate Critters do more than offer critiques of member's works - it is a community. I am not sure what possessed them to allow me into this group - because while we may all be swimming in the same waters, I am more in the shallow end doing the doggie paddle while the rest of them are discussing the best way to do a back flip off the high dive board - I am so glad that they did and have already learned so much from them!
The thing is that writing is a lonely business, and knowing that there are others out there struggling through the same things that you are can make it a lot less lonely and sometimes even a little more fun!
Cheers!
