Proving Connections Exist

Exhibit #1: Nathan Bransford, agent extraordinaire and classy gentleman (he seriously did not participate in the Agents of Twitterville's #queryfail yesterday, which was a hilarious but humiliating romp for the said query writers), has risen to the challenge of penning a positive week's worth of blogs posts. Yesterday he wrote The Ten Commandments for the Happy Writer, which is a thoroughly pithy & enjoyable read. I loved commandment eight, however, that instructs writers to "park your jealousy at the door." That topic, in itself, is worthy of an entire series of posts, but it's not where I'm headed today.

Exhibit #2: Anthony Pacheco, Hack Writer, the one of the sly wit and diabolical humor who deftly amuses and informs the blogosphere, is also a classy gentleman. Case in point: He writes, and I quote, "You will not find any negative (non-recommendation) book reviews here. That would, as unpublished writer, be a mistake and also a bit arrogant on my part, eh?" (This is, of course, not a snarky comment regarding my Hated Book Give-Away project whatsoever.) Pacheco seems to make it standard procedure to uplift and promote others whom he admires. There is no jealousy, no angst, no toddler temper tantrums from the Hack. Just happy kudos. And, that is an admirable practice.

Exhibit #3: On Wednesday, Pacheco blogs in his usual punchy manner about running across Gary Corby, fellow writer who has a book coming out next fall. Then he tweets about it, sending me and others to flood his blog post and Corby's website, in that order. Corby has an phenomonal landing-an-agent story that you simpy cannot miss. I laughed my way through it, then read the entire thing over again to the hubby. It was that good. You've got to read it for yourself. (And, congrats to Corby on all accounts! I'm looking forward to the book's release!)

Exhibit #4: Friday morning eases in, snow blanketing the world once more, and I'm still thinking about Gary Corby. I go back to his site, read his latest post about Aristophanes, and enjoy that as well. Then I start thinking about the connections -- fine, dewy spiderwebs spun of thought and word -- that invisibly touch our lives, then spring out into the world, brushing past others, looping us all together in a delicate and sometimes fragile cadre of writerly folk. And that makes me smile, which in turn makes me a happy writer.

Exhibit #5: You. What are the connections you've experienced? How do you know you're connected -- and what do you do to maintain or improve your connections? Or is it all in my head, something I've created in order to prolong my faith in humanity? You tell me :)