This past Friday, when I got home from work, I went to check my emails, as one does when gmail is blocked on the work servers. I was going to drag this out all suspenseful-like, but I just want to say it: I had an email from Tanya Frickin’ Egan Gibson! (Note: it’s possible that only three of those names are legally recognized).

She wrote me an awesome email, thanking me for writing about her book and telling me how glad she was that I’d connected to it emotionally. She told me my post made her day. And I was like, “Holy crap, this is just my tiny little blog that I started for a class project and continue to prod myself into spending more time writing. Real authors don’t see this.” But they do, apparently, thanks to the modern magic of Google Alert, and I’m starting to learn something.

All the magazines say showing up willing to write is what counts. Ha ha, they don’t really say that, they say it’s the query letter, or the hook (get ’em by the first paragraph or the editor will deliberately spill coffee on it!), or the setting, or 5 (7, 10, 3) Easy Tips to Get Noticed that make or break you, but they start with the assumption that you’re willing to put yourself out there.

I don’t always think of blogging as the “real” writing, but maybe I’m wrong. Writing here means putting myself out there and connecting with people as much as anything else I am doing in the written world right now. Serendipity means I got a thank-you email from someone much farther along in this whole writing game than I am, which made my day. This exchange has just recharged me, and I am looking forward all over again to getting back to the two stories I am currently working on, and hopefully making a connection to someone again soon.