A Beautiful Day for an Accident

There was no crunch, no bang, no dramatic squealing of tires. Just a jarring bump, like we'd driven over a particularly vindictive pothole. We looked to our back right, and lo and behold there lay the remains of the shiny cherry-red bumper cover. Our critique group was on our way home from a fabulous weekend in the Poconos at the SCBWI-EPA conference when someone rear-ended us in Frankie's brand new car (I'm talking two weeks old here). Of course, the perpetrating vehicle hooked the back of the Camry at the perfect angle to pop the piece right off. The sky was blue, it was a balmy sixty-eight degrees, and the sun shone more brightly than it had in days. In short, it was a beautiful day for an accident.

How appropriate that we get to start this blog off with a bang...or a crash, if you excuse the terrible pun that I can't resist. The inspiration for said blog came to us as we toasted each other with cheap wine after Friday night at the conference, the first we'd ever attended as a group. We'd discovered that we were quite the anomaly at the event--the only group of twenty-somethings in attendance. Of course, there were a couple others our age, but we were an obvious minority. We know that we aren't the only people just out of college or grad school who aspire to write and be published, but for some reason we were all by our lonesome.

In September 2007, this was all new to us, and we were strangers to each other. We met in a combination grad/undergrad Writing for Children workshop course at Arcadia University, and we realized that our interests and critique styles worked so well together that we should continue after the class ended. Our group is our life support as writers. We push and encourage each other, inflate egos that would otherwise curl up in a corner and die, try to figure out the industry, and help each other navigate the curiosities and pitfalls of the first novel. We've entered the world of Serious Authors, if only serious in the way that we fully intend to complete our projects and get them published before we require anti-wrinkle creams.

When we met, we each had dreams of being able to call ourselves Writers, writers who finished what they started, whose work actually saw beyond the inside of the computer. I don't think any of us believed we'd go so far along that path. We've developed dramatically since then, and it's time to chronicle our story.

This blog, for all intents and purposes, is intended for aspiring writers at any stage of the game. We'll keep you updated on our writing progress; any conferences we attend; authors, editors, and agents we meet; books we're obsessed with (or "with which we're obsessed," for the grammatically-inclined); and anything else that strikes our fancy. Of course, if there are any questions you have or topics you'd like to see covered, just let us know, and we'd be happy to oblige!

"The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better." - Stephen King, On Writing