A WRITER'S CHRISTMAS PARTY by Maria Hudgins

Our local Sisters in Crime group—we call it Mystery by the Sea because we live in coastal Virginia—met for lunch at Carrabba’s for a pre-holiday party. 

What, you ask, do writers talk about when they are just having fun? I made mental notes as I ate my lasagna. We talked about new babies, new contracts, and fresh writing opportunities. Who wants a roommate for Malice Domestic, who did NaNoWriMo this year, who is letting their hair go natural? Do you have a picture of your new dog/cat? We spent a long time on the crucial topic of Best First Sentence. Believe it or not, there was some support for “It was a dark and stormy night.” We came to no consensus of course but had a lot of laughs.

One thing we did NOT talk about was money. We all know we’re in the wrong profession for getting rich and that’s okay. I’m convinced that the few writers
who do get rich, do so almost by accident. It’s occasionally a side benefit but not a goal. We write because we are writers.

This group has been together for about twenty years, and a few original members are still with us. Most, however, are new blood. We celebrate as each newbie gets that first story published. There is no jealousy among us because we are not competing. We may all become wildly successful. Or not.

We exchanged ideas and recommendations for online resources that offer the kinds of help we need. One of our members is venturing into the world of script writing and she recommended an online program that I may check out myself. A few new books are generating talk in the mystery genre, and we mentioned some without, of course, giving away any endings.

 

We all agreed that the pandemic has had a bad effect on each of us even though most of us work best alone. Other people are where ideas come from. Without human contact we are like tailors without cloth. We need that human contact. As I listened to my fellow writers, I felt like l was rejoining the human race.  

We were a bit loud at times. Fortunately, we met at 11:30 before the lunch crowd hit so we had the place pretty much to ourselves for a while. The manager came over and talked to us, but he didn’t mention the noise. He was just being friendly. I have no idea how our server made sense of our orders. We asked her irrelevant questions, changed our minds (I’ll have what she’s having), and ordered more than we could eat, prompting us to call for a veritable snowstorm of white Styrofoam boxes.

If you are looking to join the writing community yourself, I suggest you shop around in your own community. You’ll probably be surprised that there are people like you close by. And check out online groups, too. You are not alone.