Support Group

Head befuddled by allergies, the days are bleeding together. I have every intention of writing a Shout Out Thursday blog post yesterday...except that I spent most of yesterday thinking it was Wednesday, and part of this morning still thinking it was Thursday. Calendarfail. I'm usually more together than this, I swear!

Anyway, instead of a shout outs, ramblings and general shenanigans, I wanted to take the opportunity to thank a very important group of people in my writing life - a mutually supportive ensemble of writers posting pseudo-anonymously on the Absolute Write online forums thread known colloquially as Purgatory.

When I set out to query my first novel - young, naive, full of ignorance and cluelessness - I decided I'd better figure out how it was done. An easy google search brought me to the online community of Absolute Write.

I learned more about the querying process in 5 minutes on that forum than I have learned about anything else, ever, in my entire life.

I stumbled upon Purgatory sometime in June of 2008 - a banding together of querying and subbing writers at all stages of the game with one thing in common: waiting. And what started out as a way to kill the time and lick my own wounds as the R's starting rolling in became my support group, my pillar, my comrades in arms. The first people I want to tell about the goods and the bads, a place where I'll always get a shoulder to cry on, a round of virtual chocolate, samosas and cocktails to ease the pain of the pass and an enthusiastic bootay shake - or 20 - when I have good news.

I'm not entirely sure I'd have even written The Witch's Eye if it hadn't been for my Purgie Peeps. I might have interpreted the rejection of O'Donnell as "You suck; stop writing" and moved on to another chapter in life. But I learned the failure is part of the process, that we are better writers because of our rejections and that the next novel, the next poem, the next short story could be "The One" as long as we believe it to be so.

So, my purgalicious Purgatorians, whatever success I may have in this wackadoo writing world, I will always count you all as a big reason why. Those of you who've read for me, critiqued for me, manuscripts, synopses and query letters alike - I owe you a huge debt of gratitude that mere words cannot repay.

And as I am now, apparently, up to my knees in melodramatic drivel, I'd better get the hell off the stage with a simple and expressive:

/BOOTAY SHAKE!!!