In life we are often in a position to be the external force either stopping progress or advancing it. I like to think of myself as an enabler in the positive sense of the word, pushing people to move towards completing their goals. I enjoy contributing to other people's success, even if I remain behind the curtains. I guess I am naive because I am always perplexed when I run into the doorstops, and I must say, there are a surprisingly large number of them in the literary world. That's one of the reasons that I enjoy being a part of NovelSpaces where authors share ideas and support one another.
Perhaps the comfortable relationship in this community helped to lull me into a position where I relaxed and stumbled into one of the largest doorstops I have ever encountered. I shouldn't really talk about this, lawyers may be involved, but as I sat to write this blog, I couldn't bring myself to write about anything else. A woman introduced herself into my life and where I saw opportunities for collaboration and promotion of our common goal in promoting literacy, she saw opportunities for some sort of misdirected revenge and self-aggrandizement. Sigh.
Anyway, here is my point. We aren't competing for a tiny pool of book sales, the market will accommodate a wide range of quality books. So stop, every now and then, be that external force in another writer's life. It will do you a world of good.
3 comments:
Wow! Sometimes, you'd be surprised the type of people you meet along the way.
Don't be discouraged though, for every one person that treats others like that, there are ten that treat others they way they should be treated.
I am so often disappointed with the users I run into. But then I'm often surprised at the kindness of others as well.
Wow, Carol. So sorry you had to run into one of those. I've been lucky--ran into only one or two doorstops over the past eight years. As Charles and Jewel said, the kind and generous ones are far more common.
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