C is for Community

Today I am going to follow the assignment directions. I've been up since 5AM and my brain has been bouncing off the darn walls with creativity for my characters (maybe those should have been my C words today)!

C-O-M-M-U-N-I-T-Y

You might be asking how does community have anything to do with where the Wicked Stepmother might/could/should/will be a year from now?

You might be wondering the following:

1. Will she have finally fallen off the fence and joined up with the forces of evil?

2. Is there a Wicked Stepmother Community Help Program that she plans to start or join? (Now there's an idea)!

3. Will she have transformed herself into a Good Witch who always does and says the exact right thing?

The answers to those questions are

1. Tempting...but unlikely.

2. Again I say....tempting...but no that's not the community I'm looking at.

3. The Witch part might be true in a year...but then again depending on who you ask it might already be true...Which kind of (remember I said 'kind of') brings me to my point.

I've been thinking a lot about this whole this time next year thing and I keep coming back to the same thought. Anywhere, that I might want to be in a year really starts with where I am right now. In terms of community, I want to continue developing friendships within the writing community. I feel like over the past several months I have discovered a precious treasure trove of writer friends both online and in real life.

When I first made the real deal commitment to myself to fulfill my dream of writing, I really thought that I was going to be on my own. Writing always seemed to be a lone wolf effort. It was something that those of us with overactive imaginations did to keep from driving everyone around us crazy (or that might just have been me). Writing also seemed so big that it was hard to imagine going through the process alone. It was a scary thought. I wondered who would tell me if I wrote crap other than agents? Who would help me to fine tune and sharpen my story ideas? Who would help my with my terrible use of punctuation? It always seemed like such a big effort to take on single handedly.

Until recently, I had no idea that so many of you were out there, sharing so many of the thoughts and feelings that I was also having. And now suddenly, I find myself settling into a community, both online and off and it feels like the right place to be. It is astonishing to me how kind and supportive everyone has been since I introduced myself to the world as a writer. I expected to be laughed out of the blogosphere, I really did. I suppose there is still time for that though.

So that's my C-word, Community. Today, one year from now or ten I hope to always be a member of the writing community and I look forward to building great relationships and hopefully making some future scared newbie writer feel at home in this community.

With many grateful thanks,
~M

P.S. Guess it wasn't as short as I promised...sorry! :)