Be Thankful!

Hey it’s me, Jason again. Standing in for Kristen while she handles a busy life right now!  Keep rockin, Kristen, I hope to talk to you soon!

I’m busy preparing for the big Turkey Day Feast, so here’s a quick list for you. (Every body loves a list!)

With tomorrow being Thanksgiving, I thought I would put up some things that writers can be thankful for. 

  1. Writers can be thankful for all the writers who have come before. Those who have inspired you to write. Without them, there may have never been that one book that made you think, “Hey, I can do this!”
  2. Your eyes. You can read. (Yeah, I know blind people can read Braille and listen to audiobooks, but I can only imagine that writing blind would be difficult to describe things in your stories.)
  3. Writers can be thankful for the internet.  Yeah, I know, this one’s a little lame, but consider just how useful the internet has become for writers in just the past five years.  It’s bloomed with more publishing people blogging, tweeting, and improving their web presence.
  4. Typewriters.  Yeah, without typewriters, we’d all be writing longhand. I don’t know how people did it. Seriously. I tried to write longhand in high school, filled up a spiral notebook. I don’t have the constitution to do that today.
  5. COFFEE.  Yeah, I said it.  This is mother’s milk to most of us. Some prefer tea, but most the rest of us have a hankering for burnt beans.
  6. We need to give thanks to movies. How many movies have you as a writer watched and got an inspiration? How many times have you thought to yourself, “I could write a better ending than that!”??
  7. Beta Readers.  These are poor friends we have who don’t necessarily write, but they like to read. They take time out of their precious days to read our sometimes dubious writing.  Sometimes they give good feedback, and sometimes they give the questionable , “I liked it.”  Yeah-no.
  8. Nicolas-Jacques Conté and John Loud.  Yeah, you should be thankful for both of those fools.   The first is the creator of the pencil. The second is the creator of the ballpoint pen.
  9. In the U.S., our founding forefathers who put their lives at risk so that we would have the freedom to write what we want and not face a firing squad for it.
  10. Critique partners/groups. These are the other people who share our desire to spend countless hours with our bum glue, slaving over a story that may only ever be read by its creator. These people inspire us to do better, challenge us to clean up our prose, and make us feel better when we get the invariable rejections.
  11. We also need to be thankful for publishers, those are the folks who take the risks so that we can a) read wonderful stories that make us laugh/cry/get angry  and b) give all unpublished writers hope that someday they too will be able to excite others with their stories.
  12. Literary agents. These people are the ones who drive the entire industry, keep us writers safe, and gatekeepers to ensure there is some level of maturity to the stories we read. 

 

So that’s my list (in no particular order). What do you have to be thankful for in your writing life?  I’m sure I missed a LOT of things and am interested in what you’ve got, so please post.

 Jason

 

3 comments

  1. I am Thankful for my local writer’s association (an RWA affiliate) for the amazing workshops, conferences, contest and moral support. There is no way I would be anywhere near publication without them giving me what I believe is the equivalent of a master’s degree in Authorship.

    I am also thankful to all those authors that take the time to answer our questions. Authors are extremely generous with their time and knowledge of the industry.

    Great Post, Jason.
    Thanks,
    -Tammy

    • Anasazi Stories by Jeff Posey on November 25, 2009 at 9:33 pm
    • Reply

    I am thankful for readers. For people who buy books. For people who read books. For people who talk about books. For people who can’t wait for that next book by their favorite author. For people who try new authors. For people who stay up late reading. For people who let those of us who write take them on guided daydreams of the stories we write and pay us (hopefully, one day) for the privilege. I salute readers. I hope the world keeps making more of them.

    And I’m thankful for you, Jason, for making the DFW Writers Conference so darned good: http://bit.ly/3LAkoy.

    • jasonamyers on November 26, 2009 at 6:00 am
    • Reply

    Jeff, you are ahead of me by about 9 hits for the associate program on the conference. I must catch up!

    (and of course I freaking just clicked the link above…giving you one more hit!)

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