This week the main writing blog I follow closed down after four years. Agent/Editor Betsy Lerner (author of The Forest for the Trees and Food and Loathing), is rightfully taking her time and moving it toward her actual writing goals. Her wit and smarts on the topic of writing and the publishing community sustained many people over the years, in her book and on her blog.
Although I've had Betsy's writing book for ten years, I only Googled her and found her blog in July. So being a relatively new comer, I don't feel I can share in the sentimentality as much as others blogging about her goodbye. However, she is a magnetic personality and to learn so much from someone in a short time is something for which to be grateful. I will miss the moment when I opened my email to see a new post or the list of comments from the last time I'd stopped by to comment myself. So it is goodbye Betsy, but not really...
When someone pours into your life, they never really leave you do they? Whether it be negative or positive, we find a way to settle in with it and live...negative being the harder task by far. So Betsy will never leave her readers so long as they retain her lessons and wisdom.
Not to mention her community. As much as I enjoyed Betsy herself, her crazy array of followers made the reading fun too. I've started following many of their blogs as well over the past months and am glad I did. Now I still have that community, although not all in one place, I have these people who understand a writer's world and what it means to be living a writing life. And in the end, that was my whole purpose for blogging in the first place. These people were as much my inspiration to start my own blog as anything. Together we can keep inspired, as Betsy has taught us.
I've been following Betsy for about three years, and she's brought me some of my closest friends. I will always be grateful to her.
ReplyDeleteThat is really cool and unique...not an experience many people have.
DeleteI miss my mornings with betsy and her followers.
DeleteI know. I'm glad all of you have blogs I can come creep on! So I still feel I have some connection to the reading/writing world!
DeleteI feel like I'm driving around the block looking for a place to park and all the spots are taken. I could pull into the space by the fire hydrant but authority scares me.
ReplyDeleteYou wrote a great tribute by the way.
Change sucks.
Great description Wry. What I will miss most is seeing everyone in one place. Betsy's blog reminds me of "Cheers."
Delete"Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
and they're always glad you came.
You wanna be where you can see,
our troubles are all the same
You wanna be where everybody knows
Your name."