The Joy of Giving

So, I've taken a class this semester to help myself get published, and so far, so good. I have yet to get published through this class, but we're still at the beginning of the road.

The interesting thing about all of this is that I keep helping my classmates by giving them tips and website links, and other resources to help them with their writing and publication.

In class I offer nuggets of information I originally thought were known to anyone who writes, but found useful to a few of my classmates who did not know. Everybody does this in class, and I've learned a lot from their nuggets of information myself. We all also love to give each other personal tips.

Dave, an old man who reminds me of Peter Boyle with more hair atop his head, introduced himself to the class like we all did, and talked about what kind of writing he's interested in.

It turns out he's into questioning Christian Doctrine. Well, it hit me as I was sitting there listening to him that I had read an article in an issue of Writer's Digest a while back about a hot and growing market along the same lines. I made a mental note to bring the article in for Dave to look at if I could manage to remember. I did remember, and boy was Dave thrilled. He expressed total thanks when I first gave the magazine to him last Thursday, and then over the weekend emailed me to thank me again. It didn't stop there. Yesterday in class, he came to me and thanked me by saying, "Boy, that magazine you gave me was great."

Yesterday, I got to class, only to find the class before ours still in there. I said hello to Jon, a guy in my class, who has a fantasy book ready to be published. Instead of standing there in silence, I searched in my brain for a topic of conversation. We exhausted one topic, and then it hit me that Jon is a fantasy writer, and had expressed interest in finding out how graphic novels are made. Excellent! Just the day before I had been reading one author's newsletter, in which she had discussed how graphic novels are made, since she is in the process of making one herself. I found the bit to be so interesting and intriguing, that I was wowed by something I never gave much thought to. I told Jon about this, and he was thrilled at my offer to show him said page. Later, I emailed him the link, and got an email back today thanking me.

I'm embarassed by the shower of appreciation for simply transporting a magazine from my bookshelf into someone's hands, and emailing a link I had no hand in creating.

It feels good, though. It is the joy of giving, and the good feeling will do until I feel another form of joy-- that of being published somewhere new.