Growing up in the South, my family get-togethers started out with aunts, uncles, cousins, etc eating, visiting, fishing, and generally having a good time before it morphed into an innocent, but fierce game of penny-ante poker. You know those games where the mason jars and Folgers cans full of change come out and if the winner went home with five or ten dollars, they’d really owned the table.
While those family times were fun, those backyard poker games aren’t the ones other people can’t wait to watch. It’s shows like Celebrity Poker Showdown that has the public’s attention. Yep. Those little jars filled with nickels and dimes were no match for playing with the big boys.
Writing is the same way. It’s great to be able to pour out our passion on paper or computer and let our family members gush over it and encourage us regardless of how much editing it’s in need of. We all need that. It inspires us to keep writing. But there comes a time that if we want to “play with the big boys” in the publishing world, no matter if it’s a small publishing house or a large one, or even a magazine, we’re going to have to bring more to the table than our pages of passion and prose. We’re going to have to up the ante on our skills.
On this blog, we’ve recommended oodles of books in the past. Today, I want to focus instead on a writer’s site that can potentially help us fine tune our skills so that our passion and prose has a better chance of reaching farther than our families.
My Book Therapy is a great place to connect with other writers of all skill levels in a Monday night chat that focuses on a specific writing related topic. They also have all their past chats archived for our viewing and learning pleasure. I’ve been able to find wealth of information on subjects such as the black moment, GMC, and vast number of topics that are not only more bite-size than a book in reading, but also because of questions and answers within the chat, I’ve often had experiences where I’d have a little different perspective than what I’d read in a book. That explanation within the Monday night chat gave me that “aha” moment I needed in understanding a certain concept.
The chats are held mostMonday nights at 7pm Central time at http://mybooktherapy.com/. But, as I mentioned above, they archive their chats to make them available at your leisure.
Before I go, I thought I 'd share some of the recent topics I’ve found interesting. Enjoy!
- Monday Night Bleachers Chat March 18, 2013 Michelle Lim: Brainstorming Heroes Readers Love
- Monday Night Chat 5/20/2013 Brainstorming Mentor Michelle Lim: Brainstorming Spiritual Truths and Lies For Character Journeys
- Monday Night Chat May 13, 2013 Reba J. Hoffman: Kill Their Cat--Why Inflicting Pain on Your Characters Makes a Good Read
