Blogger extraordinaire Shelli Johannes over at “Market My Words” is holding a great contest this week. It’s all about paying it forward and thanking those who have helped you along your way. Though I’m late to the game, I’d love to play along.
There are many, many writers who have helped me in my writing career. I can’t possibly name them all, but I’d like to publicly thank one today: children’s author Tracey E. Dils.
I met Tracey when her daughter was in my writing class at a community program. I was only beginning to *think* about possibly, maybe, kind of sort of dreaming of becoming a children’s author at the time. Tracey was the only “real life” author I’d met and, frankly, I was star struck.
Out of sheer ignorance about how things typically worked, I called Tracey up out of the blue one day (using the personal contact info I’d received for my students - ugh!) and asked her if I could pick her brain about the publishing industry. Tracey then spent an hour patiently answering all my dumb questions - questions that I could have found out myself if I’d bothered to do just a little bit of research. She was very encouraging and didn’t once give me the impression that I was bothering her.
Over the years as I’ve never forgotten Tracey’s grace and generosity. And I always try to remember the kind way she treated me when I was just a wannabe. Now, that I'm a "real life" writer myself, I try to pay Tracey’s kindness forward when someone asks me about how to break into publishing.
Tracey - if you ever read this - sorry this is so long overdue - THANKS!
~Carmella
PS. You can check out Tracey's great book. "You Can Write Children's Books," here.
aw that was so nice....:) good luck and thanks for paying it forward!
ReplyDeleteShelli is really a great example. I love all that she does for other writers.
ReplyDeleteOh, neat! That does look like a great blog.
ReplyDeleteI would thank my friend and mentor Deena Lipomi, who was patient with me when I typed single spaced and used a lot of adverbs.