I haven't written one of these for awhile. There are a lot of reasons for that...I've been focusing on my
other blog, and I never get to post on Wednesdays on that blog. Then I was working on a novel, and then I was figuring out how to market said novel, and somewhere in the middle of all of that I was wallowing in apathy from all the editing. But I love this idea, and I love this group, and so every month, as I visit my favorite blogs and read their IWSG posts, I've really wanted to join. But something else was holding me back. More on that later.
Being a writer is a weird, weird thing. First of all you spend so much time trying to keep yourself off the internet while you write a book, and then, when the book is written, you suddenly have to force yourself back on to the internet to do this thing called marketing. The potentially most fulfilling way to market is unfortunately the most time-consuming. It works though, at least that's what I'm told. That is to find a group of like-minded bloggers and help each other out.
At least from the outside, that's exactly what IWSG is.It's a group of people who found each other at the right stage of their lives and who have bonded tightly. They are the first ones to post comments on each other's blogs, they critique each other's manuscripts and promote each other's works and participate in each other's cool blog events. And then there are the rest of us--the ones who came a little late to the party. We still gain from being part of the group, and with a little luck, maybe we'll bond the way those first members bonded.
It's the same with some of the huge blog challenges and hops I see. They've gotten too big to be as useful as they were for the original participants. And yet somewhere, out there, I know members of my tightly bonded group are waiting. Will I find them at IWSG? Only if I actually participate.
