I Love My Cartel.

This is my very first blog post. Ever.

A few weeks ago I started a writing course on getting published by Joe Bunting from https://thewritepractice.com/.

We began by sharing stories with each other, reading and offering critiques. It was good. I exercised writing muscles I forgot I had. Truthfully, I mostly wanted to read what others wrote about my story. But the deal is, we must first read three other stories and comment on them before we could read critiques of our own stories. I became intrigued. A lot of the writing was actually really good. And the critiques were positive, kind and helpful, with real, useful suggestions for improvement.

Then we were encouraged to write and share stories for particular people we know. After all, stories are meant to be shared. More reading and critiquing. A little less daunting. I wrote a story about my daughter. How brutal could she be? (she was very supportive, bless her).

And then a beautiful thing happened. We were encouraged to actually contact each other and conduct interviews using four basic questions. We were also instructed to contact other writers, people outside the course, and ask the same questions. Really, just having conversations with people – writers – about writing. What an inspirational experience! I made contact with someone who I had never met, (https://www.thetimescribe.com/) we connected immediately around our love for writing, and now we are friends. I reached out to another author friend of mine, who I have known for years (https://www.amazon.com/Marina-Gottlieb-Sarles/e/B00C0ZIHN0) and we had a beautiful, elevated conversation around the four questions and her writing and I learned some new things from her!

This week, we are encouraged to reach out to each other in the course, or to other writers in our spheres and just offer help of some kind. Some writers have offered to read and/or edit, some have offered to share links on social media, others have offered research and platforms for cross-blogging. It is just a flurry of goodwill and service and it could not be a more stimulating whirlwind to be in. We are building relationships and trust and supporting each other in an arena where we could also just be tight lipped, territorial and competitive. But we’re not. Joe calls it “building a cartel”. Man, if everyone built a cartel, we would have world peace.

Really digging the Write to Publish course!