RTW: Thanksgiving

Every Wednesday, YA Highway hosts a “Road Trip” where one of the YAH team posts a question which we answer on our blogs and then post a link to our blog in the comments on the YAH site. Some weeks the questions are easier than others. This is not one of those easy weeks (thanks, Kirsten!). This week’s Road Trip Wednesday question is: What writing or publishing-related thing(s) are you most thankful for?

One thing I’m thankful for is that Kirsten allowed the plural “things.” There’s no way I could come up with just one single writing or publishing-related thing to be thankful for. I could answer this really broadly and say “technology,” because there are so many things we writers take for granted today that I know, even twenty years ago, would be unbelievable. I mean, I thought it was cool when I got my first typewriter when I was 15, or when I first experimented with a word processor to type up one of my papers for University. Or the first time I printed a paper on one of the University laser printers and was awed at how much it looked like it was out of a book or a journal (which made me feel momentarily like a real scholar). However, since I know you want to get on and read what everyone else said, I’ll give you three:

Word Processors. I don’t care if you’re a Mac or a PC, whether you Word, OpenOffice, Scriviner, or something else. The fact you can sit at a computer (laptop, desktop) anywhere and type up your book, spell check, access a Thesaurus, backspace, insert, cut-and-paste, italicize, bold, etc. without having to use any other tool is so cool! I know some people like to draft and/or edit with pad-and-pen, but at some point you need to type the document up. Imagine if you only had a typewriter and a bottle of liquid paper (or “white-out” I think it’s called in the US? Evidently, my typewriter days were spent on the other side of the pond!)!

Email. Back in the day, you had to type up your query letter on a typewriter, fold that query letter into an envelope, put a stamp on the envelope, address the envelope, and then put it in a mailbox, where it would reach its destination in a matter of days. And you would have to repeat this process for every query you sent out. These days, you can type up a template of your query, customize it for the agent you are querying, put it in an email addressed to the agent, and hit send. We might cringe today at the thought of how long it takes to send 30 emails to separate agents–imagine what it was like not so long ago when email wasn’t an option!

Blogging. Some might consider blogging a distraction from writing, but thus far in my blogging adventure, I would have to disagree. Rather, it gives me a reason to write when I’m not writing my WIP. Sure, this isn’t the same kind of writing, but it still involves finding the right way to express an idea, careful word selection, editing, and proofing. It also gives me an outlet for thoughts, ideas, and even to offer samples of my fiction, and get feedback from people who follow my blog. I have drawn so much inspiration and encouragement from blogs I follow and from the comments people leave on my blog, I sometimes wonder why it took me so long to do this!

There’s my answer. What about you? What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?