Is it all who you know?
I hate to say it. But so often it’s true. It is who you know. And not just in writing, but in everything.
My daughter has made friends with a great little girl at school. Because of their friendship, I’ve made friends with the other mom. Besides finding a new friend that I really like, and helping my daughter hang out with her own friend, two benefits have come from this that I would never have foreseen.
The first is that our family has been invited to spend a good chunk of the summer at my new friend’s pool. (It’s actually her mother’s pool, but that’s a technicality) This pool a) is heated b) has a concession stand where everything is a quarter c) has a built-in lifeguard, since my new friend is one d) has a shaded gazebo where we parents can hang out if we aren’t swimming, and e) has guaranteed friends for the kids to play with.
My husband’s question? How did you manage to get hooked up with this?
Hey, I’m not fighting it.
The second neat thing that happened with this new friend… My daughter was over at her house for the first time, and partway through the playdate I get a call from the mom: “Are Judy Clemens? The one that writes books?” (In normal life I go by my husband’s family name) Here my daughter was helping get supper around and mentioned casually that “My mama writes books.”
After I confirmed that I was, indeed, that Judy, she confessed that she has written a book and is working on getting it published. We have since sat down for wonderful discussions on the publishing industry and how our crazy writer minds work.
Fun stuff, and coincidental. Or is it Fate?
Anyhow, this is proof that things like this do happen,and often it works this way in the publishing industry. As my editor, Barbara Peters, said to me, so much of making it big is being at the right place at the right time.
But that means doing what you can to be at the right place at the right time – attending conferences, getting involved in organizations, joining a blog such as this one…
And maybe…just maybe…the right time, or the right person will happen.
