I find it a great irony that while writing is, in many ways, a very solitary profession, it is also a very tight knit community. Through crit groups or reader’s circles or Twitter or Facebook or whatever, we often keep stumbling across the same people until we are one giant publishing industry version of the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon. You wind up meeting people all over the place. Some you keep up with. Some you don’t.
Today in my inbox I got a guest post by someone from my publishing past so to speak, a woman I knew from prior accountability groups. I’d heard her book was published (which was marvelous–I critted it back when and I’m delighted to see it found a home). That got me to thinking of the other people I knew from that venue, in particular someone I inadvertently hurt along the way.
You ever do that? Something randomly reminds you of someone and then you go internet and Facebook stalk them to see what they’re up to? I more often do this with people from high school, but today I did it for this person, curious as to where they are and what might have happened in the intervening four or five years. They self published recently. Got some good reviews. I was happy to see that. The particular title they put out was one I’d read and enjoyed. Don’t know what happened with the book that had snared the attention of a behemoth agent back then. A perusal of blog posts showed that they’re still struggling with the things they were struggling with all those years ago. I haven’t spoken to this person since I offered an apology for the thing that upset them. Don’t know if I was ever forgiven. Probably not. I’m not upset about it. We diverged. It happens. But it was kind of interesting to go back and see where someone from my writing past has made it to in the last several years as life and the publishing world has gone through so many changes.
I don’t guess I have much of a point with this post other than that it’s sometimes a good thing to see where others are as a matter of regaining your own perspective.