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June 10, 2007
"You've Got to Have Friends"
We quibble about exactly when we all met, but we do agree that it was Tricia Gardella who brought us all together. She cobbled together a group of writers who'd taken classes from Jane Yolen at Centrum and invited us all to stay at Ann Paul's house one August, before the annual SCBWI conference in Los Angeles. Seven of us stuck and called ourselves the Write Sisters and for the last nearly 20 years we've gathered at various locations (mostly Ann's!) to eat junk food, read manuscripts and walk.
Just a week or so ago we were together again. Not all of us: sisters Dian Curtis Regan and Vivian Sathre couldn't get away from their schedules. But they were there in spirit, that's for sure. Our den mother, Tricia, tore herself away from her 9000 enterprises, including an ice cream shop in Jamestown, CA and a kitchen store in Sonora.
These busy wonderful women managed to cook up the surprise of a lifetime for me. Through a complicated series of steps, they contacted Jon Barkat to obtain the original image of the cover of Hattie Big Sky and had it framed to present to me. Not only that, they'd circulated a card so that Vivian, Dian and even Jon could participate, even though they couldn't be in L.A.
Of course, there were tears. Mostly mine. My heart was so full, what else could I do? These are women who have been there for me since I read my first wretched manuscript aloud all those years ago. They are women who, no matter what has been going on in their personal or professional lives, have dropped everything to help me get a story just right. Or simply listened when things were tough.
This is the part of writing that is rarely addressed in craft books: the family that is created as we create character, plot and story. It's the part of our writing that never gets blurbed or starred reviews but it's the part we writers couldn't live without.
My tip for today: open your heart to your own writing family.
Perhaps you can make it without one.
But why on earth would you want to?
Posted by kirby at June 10, 2007 09:16 PM
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