With a Little Help From my Friends

Posted by Gia Dawn, 03/31/07 12:33 PM

This was another author’s day to post, but in her part of the world, the electricity just wasn’t co-operating. She sent out a message for help.

So here I am, filling in. I didn’t have a great topic in mind, but one sure came up fast. How on earth can we make it without a little help from our friends?

Years ago at a writer’s conference I heard a well-known author moan “why should we train our replacements”? Granted the sentiment does have merit—if your world is filled with scarcity and competition.

My world isn’t. In my world I have been blessed to be associated with some of the most supportive, giving, and amazingly talented authors and friends I have ever met. Period.

Their talent both on and off the page boggles the mind, their energy is amazing, and their desire to spend endless hours in tasks that benefit other authors is truly cool!

So, this is a great big thank you everyone out there who has taken the time to help out a friend.

However you have done it, whoever you have done it for, know your efforts are appreciated.

Thanks from all of us who have benefited from your efforts.

Category: | 03/31/07 12:33 PM

Comments: [4]

  1. 1 Tilly Greene

    Here, here Gia. I guess I’m a hippy at heart and have no desire to hear negative thoughts like the one this “seasoned” author spoke. Thankfully, I’ve had authors who know more than me open their doors to offer suggestions and help to me, and I happily return the favor.

    I second your thanks for all their help!

    Comment by Tilly Greene · Mar 31, 05:29 PM
  2. 2 Margo Lukas

    Sorry I’m so late. Went to the big city today….

    How great that you helped out, Gia. And I think this is a great topic.

    I got a HUGE hand up in my career. You know that book I just released? :) Well, Half Moon Rising , started out as a class project in Leigh Michael’s Romance 1 course over at Gotham’s Writer Workshop.

    She had a past student, Rachelle Chase, (Red Sage and Aphrodisia author) who ran a contest. Leigh encouraged me to enter it. I won the “Chase the Dream” contest and then an editor here at Samhain requested a partial from the 1000 word entry. The rest is history. I’ll always owe those two authors a debt of gratitude.

    I just hope that someday I’ll have enough knowledge and experience under my belt to be of real help to someone else :)

    Comment by Margo Lukas · Mar 31, 09:36 PM
  3. 3 Marie-Nicole

    I have had such wonderful support from my fellow MCRW members and authors I don’t know where’d I’d be without them. I especially owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Carole Buck who used to write for Silhouette Desire. At the time, I didn’t know she was multipublished. I just knew she was a fan fic writer who definitely knew what she was talking about and who also wrote the best La Femme Nikita fan fiction available.

    I actually asked her (believe me, I didn’t know how much I was asking) to “have a look” at my first original project which was 150 pages along. She gave me a red-line special, bled red ink all over it, BUT I learned so much from that critique. I called her and we talked. I said, “Toward the last, were you just running out of red ink or did my writing get better?” She laughed and said I’d really settled down and my writing drew her into the story. She was so fearful that I’d hate her and when I didn’t, she said I had one thing necessary for a writer to succeed, the right kind of writer’s ego. In other words, I could take constructive criticism and go on to make the work better.

    Hate her? My God, after I did my first stint as a contest judge, I realized what I’d asked her to do and my gratitude deepened measurably.

    Comment by Marie-Nicole · Apr 1, 03:34 PM
  4. 4 Amelia Elias

    As the friend who put out the distress call, I’d just like to say THANK YOU, GIA!!! Living in a tiny rural town (and I do mean tiny—population 325, one blinking light and a lot of chickens), when a pidgeon pees on the electric lines, we lose power. We didn’t stand a chance in those storms.

    And what a great topic! I’ve also received terrific help and support from so many authors when I was unpublished and, at times, frustrated. I’ve been told that in other genres, the atmosphere is a lot different. Established authors see new or aspiring authors as competition for a dwindling resource, i.e., readers and their attention. (This was told to me by an author who also writes science fiction and had just come back from her first—and last—sci-fi writer’s conference. She said the backbiting and competition were just too much for her to take.)

    I feel so lucky that romance readers have such a voracious appetite for books! I know just from my experience, if I see three great books on the shelf instead of just one, that means I’m going home with a heavier bag, not that I have to choose between them. I know a lot of other readers who are the same way. Publishers in this genre put out a LOT of books. There’s plenty of spaces for everyone, IMO—and thank goodness for that!

    Also, I wonder how much of this more supportive, help-up rather than keep-down atmosphere is because the majority of romance authors are women? Any ideas?

    Comment by Amelia Elias · Apr 3, 12:32 AM

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