The Secret Society of Writers—We’re EVERYWHERE!
My new/old classroom has a couple of bulletin boards—a long one along the side of the room and a square one next to the whiteboard at the front. It’s been a while since I’ve had that kind of wall space, and I’ve never really been skilled at fantastic bulletin board design, so I was kind of at a loss.
I ended up putting some math stuff on the long one and decided to make some color print-outs of book cover images for the smaller one. It makes the kids ask questions—”Uh, Miss Lewis, why do you have a bunch of book covers up in math class?”—and gives a good excuse to talk to them about not pigeonholing themselves or others.
I’ll probably change it later, but for now, it works.
The other day, our librarian/media center coordinator/general queen of awesome stopped by to see when I wanted to come in with my classes to get our new textbooks. She caught sight of the book covers and said, “Oh! I want to read that steampunk but haven’t gotten to it yet!” (Incidentally, The Unnaturalists by agent-mate Tiffany Trent!)
She already knew about my publishing deal from one of the other math teachers. One thing leads to another and … she says the magic words:
“Then there’s me, still at the querying stage.”
She knows what ‘querying’ means.
We speak the same language.
She is one of us!
We launch into talk of how she writes contemporary YA and has her ms out to an agent. How she uses QueryTracker and how I think she really ought to stop by AgentQuery Connect and check it out (because really, every writer should). How we’re both on Twitter and she thinks my agent is awesome and hilarious (because @literaticat is awesome and hilarious).
Meanwhile, the other math teacher I’d been planning with thinks we’re both a little crazy.
Well, let’s face it. We are a little crazy.
We’re writers.
And we find each other at the least-expected moments sometimes.
I’d love to be in a world where someone knows what querying is, so I don’t have to explain that once I put my e-pencil down, I don’t just send it off to a publisher and expect magic to happen.