Community of Writers

Hey, all, Grey again, here to talk about my favorite thing. Writing.

I started writing when I was fifteen, and right from the beginning I was fortunate to have writing peers in my life. In those early days we did team writing, where I would write until I was out of ideas or inspiration and then I would hand the notebook over to my partner and she would write until she couldn’t anymore and hand it back to me. We would spend hours every day at lunch and in study hall talking plot and characters and what had to happen next to get the results we wanted. My first published short story was created this way. Our English teacher was a little puzzled by our content, but he was very encouraging of the actual process. But what kept me writing was my friend and the inspiration I got in bouncing ideas and critiques back and forth with her.

In college I made friends with people who taught me about the business of writing. Not selling and promoting, but sitting down every day and writing something, even if it was just playing pun tag with Steven in history class (he’s a lefty, I’m a righty, so we could share a notebook without being obvious. It was great). They knew what they were talking about because they both sold to print houses fifteen years before I ever finished my first book. Sadly I’ve lost touch with one of them and speak only occasionally to the other, but I think of them often as I’m writing and look for them every time I’m in the bookstore. Someday I’ll be there with them.

I stopped writing for a long time. Grad school crushed my creativity and having children took all my time, so it took me a long time to pick up a pen again. But more significantly, I didn’t have any other writers in my life. Finally, though, the muse would not be denied (and I got bored spitless sitting in my school bus waiting for school to let out so I could drive the kids home) and I did start doing some hobby writing. And I found writers through that new-fangled device, the Internet. I made friends, and those friends turned into peers and partners and mentors. Three people in particular have come to mean as much to me as any friends I have ever had. We are all radically different writers, but somehow there’s a synergy, a connection between us that invigorates me. I find so much inspiration in discussing writing with them, in actually writing with them, in creating and living the writing life with them as a part of it. They are my friends, my teachers, my mentors, my muses. I really don’t know if I would even be a writer today without them. They are my creative family, and I am so grateful to have them as a part of my life.

And now I’m even more fortunate, because two of them have agreed to start a newsletter with me. They should be familiar to Liquid Silver readers. Pepper Espinoza is a wonderfully prolific and passionate writer with three books out from LSB, including her latest, California Stars. Vivien Dean’s work is inspired and complex and difficult to categorize, making her all the more enjoyable to read. She is the author of LSB’s Under a Rogue Moon as well as the Eppie finalist Chains of Jericho. If you are interested, please join us at Passion Oscura to receive our monthly newsletter and get registered for one of our three drawings for some great prizes to be awarded when our first issue is released on June 1. And best of all, you’ll have a chance to get to know these wonderful women, excellent writers and great friends.