uninspiring inspiration

I joined a writer's group and went to my first meeting yesterday. It will also be the last meeting I go to.

Firstly, my GPS was majorly fucking up and was telling me the location was not where it was (it was a block down and on the opposite side of the street from the location my GPS told me to go to - and, while I'm criticizing my GPS, I'm pissed that my new GPS doesn't have a male british voice to give directions - I find the only voice that you can select for english to be annoying). And because my eyes aren't super great it was hard to find the place.

I had to pay $5 to attend the meeting. Why? Good question. We literally sat at a table at the smiling moose deli in bum fuck nowhere writing silently for almost two hours. The good thing about this is I had brought my kid's book and I edited it. Before the meeting broke up we each read two paragraphs from what we were working on. I went second to last and read a paragraph from my book and the organizer had a surprised look on her face when I was done.

She cornered me after the meeting and asked what I thought. I told her honestly that I do PLENTY of writing and I don't need someone to force me to sit down and write but I do need other people's input because I'm basically writing in a vacuum. She said she would hook me up with an editor she knows. She also said, just from hearing a few sentences from my kid's book, that she thinks I have a great voice. I told her I thought my book would be a hard sell because it's so different than most of what's out there for kids and she said "Don't chase a trend. Harry Potter was an outlier too."

So I went home and, besides doing a lot of walking, finished editing the book. I'm also going to do an illustration for each chapter (I showed the illustrations I did to Jess and Edge and they laughed, though not in an unkind way, they're just shitty beyond words - Edge said he can help me because he's an amazing artist). I'll post a chapter every day on my blog. Feedback welcome.