Thursday, June 9, 2011

It's a WE Party


by Malena Lott

As a recovering Type A personality, I have a tough time doing tasks that don’t involve some brainpower. My search for zen includes finding “joy in the mundane,” which I happily discovered thanks to TED Talks, because the laundry gets folded and I feel like I learned something. The zen part is that I walk out of that tiny room without a single curse word uttered, even when I can’t find matching socks.

My recent panty-folding viewing entailed Howard Rheingold talking about collaboration, which you gals know is a lonely writers B/F/F. We may write in solitude, but eventually we are working with a CP (Critique Partner) or getting notes from our agents or editors and on the line we go. If you think about it, life is a plastic lunch tray that gets slid down the line for mustached lunch ladies to plop that day’s rations onto the designated square.

Lately, my collaboration tray runneth over, and it’s all applesauce and mac and cheese comfort food. While I’ve been on Twitter since the dinosaurs tweeted, it’s only this past year that I’ve truly banded with other writers, such as adding more lit-kicking “bookettes” to Book End Babes and putting together a winter anthology with other cool Girlfriends authors Jenny Gardiner, Sam Wilde, Maria Geraci, Maggie Marr and an up-and-coming lit girl, Jenny Peterson. And, of course, this amazing blog, which continues to provide grapevine goodness.

When we push our stories from their beloved nest, we depend on each other then, too, to provide trust-worthy arms to pass our tales across the mosh pit. Word-of-mouth has never been more critical in the book biz, and I’m so grateful we’re in this party together.

Malena Lott’s e-book novella, Life’s a Beach, is in the Kindle store now. Information about her huge June Life’s a Beach giveaway can be found on her website.

2 comments:

  1. Malena, I'm really looking forward to reading this winter anthology -- what a great group you have to collaborate with! -- and congrats, again, on the release of Life's a Beach ;).

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  2. Marilyn,
    Thanks so much. I cannot wait to read the other gals' stories in the anthology, too. A definite perk of the writer life is getting to read other writers' work, and as a blogger, too, I'm thrilled to get sneak peeks at books pre-launch. I'm loving Marisa de los Santos' FALLING TOGETHER, which comes out in October. I figure at least two more floats in the pool ought to get me to "the end."
    My husband, who is the editor at bookgasm.com, recently got several anthologies sent to him that look interesting. 1) Chicks Kick Butt 2) Happily Ever After and 3) The Urban Fantasy anthology. The last two both include Holly Black and Neil Gaiman stories, so I'm intrigued to take a look.

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