Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The Seekers - Blog for Writers

It’s Wednesday and our Writer’s Journey continues as we feature another blog for writers, The Seekers. We're thrilled to have Ruth Logan Herne, one of the Seekers, visit and share pieces of the journey for this group of writers and why Seekerville was created.

Enjoy!

The Seekers

Ladies, congrats! A new venture. You go, girls!

Yay, you! This is where it begins. Stepping out, trying new hats, working together. Of course making fun of one another can’t hurt, especially if you embarrass each other in public, a trait the Seekers practice on their children. Since it worked well there, we decided to bring our antics to the Internet.

For the world to see, of course!


Seekerville Where else can you find fifteen competitive women who not only help one another achieve publication thereby becoming even more adversarial, but train others to take their place?

Either these gals are very good or uniformly stupid.

Since 11/15 are now published and/or contracted, let’s go with good!

The Seekers are an amazing group of contest divas who banded together to pray one another into publication.

Step back a few years. These gals repeatedly bumped heads in romance writing contests. They’d alternately place, win and nudge each other out of the tiara-wearing spot from week to week, contest to contest. Talk about annoying! Everyone knows I have the best tiara-wearing hair of the group! It’s not even close.

But…

Big BUT…

These gals recognized each other’s drive and direction. If we were good individually, how much better could we be as a unit? To that end we started a Yahoo group dedicated to God and us, bound by faith, work and love.

Writing is a solitary business. It’s difficult to find or form a local writing group where members share a similar drive and/or spirit. That’s part of what makes The Seekers special. Seekers don’t quit, they persevere. They work. They pray. Then they work harder. We’ve been rejected, dejected and ejected but we refuse to cave. One by one the calls have come until now, when there are only four ladies keeping the campfires going on Unpubbed Island.

Nearly two years ago, Tina suggested we start a blog.

Someone suggested focusing on contests/writing since that’s what brought us together.

Perfect. We developed Seekerville, a gathering place where readers and writers can mingle, get great food, find a hospitable welcome and a kick in the butt (as needed) and know they’re not alone. Ever. God is with them and the Seekers are on hand to dole out chocolate, hankies, Kleenex, lectures (my job) and more chocolate.

Always chocolate. Chocolate is God-given, but you knew that, right?

God-centered, we love to have a good time. Joke. Laugh. Inspire. We revel in God’s amazing grace and the intrinsic frailties of human nature. We are flawed and fun, focused and faithful. A wonderful combination!

I hope the gals can stop by and add their takes on this journey. We’ve cried when kids go off to college and war, and celebrated their safe return. We’ve commiserated over hair color, waistlines and the whole idea of digital scales just seems wrong. I mean, whose idea WAS that, anyway???

We’ve lost parents, friends, babies, pets and teeth, and we’ve supported one another throughout. We revel in romance while admitting we’ve yet to figure men out. But that’s okay because they always come around in a romance novel, don’t they? If only it were that easy in real life.

Laughing here.

Thanks again for the invite, girls.
Ruth

The Seekers

Ruth Logan Herne - Missy Tippens - Janet Dean
Sandra Leesmith - Myra Johnson - Cheryl Wyatt
Camy Tang - Julie Lessman - Cara Slaughter
Glynna Kaye - Mary Connealy - Pam Hillman
Tina M. Russo - Debby Giusti - Audra Harders