PEOPLE UNITED BY GIVING WRITERS

Needy people? You see them all over the place?

So do I. I’m one of them. Oh, and so are you.

We need things we don’t have.

Writers give some of those things, or at least the feeling of giving.

So what?

There’s a writer on twitter talking about his book making the top ten finalists list in a contest.

That’s hope. He’s giving others hope when he says he considers making the list a win.

It is a win and here’s why:

Entering a contest means you’ll have at least one more set of trained eyes on your work, the thing you spent hours and days, weeks, years perfecting.

Making the top ten list means you’ve opened more eyes.

If that’s not a win, what is?

I read one of his stories.

Short Story, Life Story, Or Both

It’s a story of young people in academia working their way through the system.

Young people in their twenties and thirties.

The man is defending his thesis and banging his girlfriend.

They have a neighbor in an unresolved relationship also banging the girlfriend.

(Note: I use the term ‘banging’ because it’s a story of dudes being jerks and not noticing women like they will later in their lives. Ask me now I know.)

What the story isn’t about: A student blazing a trail through her undergrad program taking eighteen hour quarters and more when allowed, banging an Italian prince in the dorm, a football star in a fraternity, and some drifter English major who moved into a women’s co-op.

Do love stories about people in their twenties resonate with older people on their second or third wife/husband more than older people still married to their first?

Do they resonate with readers who got married at nineteen and skipped the whole ‘getting to know shitty people’ part of living single through their twenties?

‘Shitty people’ is probably the wrong term for others if you got married and divorced and married the same sort of person the second time.

But it might be the right term for you?

I had a friend who said this about couples who argued all the time, who said things like, “I’m talking. Excuse me.”

And, “Let me finish before you interrupt.”

He said, “They ought to get married and save two other people from having to put up with that.”

Then he married a woman who said things like, “Excuse me, I’m talking. Let me finish before you interrupt.”

They love each other for saving two other suckers.

Memoir Writer In The Needy People House

I’ve got a four hundred and fifty page manuscript that’s been through three cycles of professional editing.

It’s been fun and expensive getting extra eyes on my work.

Is it ready for submission?

I’ve rewritten the opening and sent it to a reader for an opinion.

While I wait for them to open their email, I’m making a plan.

Evan Morgan Williams’ story gave the plan a push.

He’s got people working through their days doing what people do: making a difference.

They do it with their actions and the results of their actions.

Whether they succeed in making a difference to anyone else depends on the writer.

Mr. Williams made a difference with his work that might open a door in my work.

I’m surrounded by needy people in my story and I’m the neediest of them all.

So what?

It’s a cancer memoir with a twist.

How did a short story reinforce the twist?

That’s the ‘giving writer’ part.

When people give advice to writers like, “Write a lot. Read a lot,” what they mean is look for meaning beyond your own experience.

The good news? It’s good advice at every age, every stage of development.

If you read a lot and write a lot, chalk it up as a win for your side, my side, and the side of everyone who writes like it matters.

Needy people need more.

Be in your own Top Ten list, winner.