Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Slipping On a Red Dress

A while back, I started seeing a curious button on some of my favorite blogs. Two buttons, actually.

Intrigued, I wandered over to the site and stalked their link ups. Reading post after post by amazingly talented writers, I felt a little nervousy niggle of anticipation.

Could I join this group?

Fast forward two months and I was still stalking, still reading and that niggle of anticipation had started to turn into an annoying voice.

Join the friggin' group, already!

I started looking for the perfect prompt. A prompt that I could nail. An easy prompt. That's when I realized something about this particular writing group.

There are no easy prompts.

They push and challenge and dig. They strip away the surface coat of paint on our blogs and force us to look at the grain underneath, exposing the beauty in the bare.

I knew what I had to do.

Taking a deep breath, I jumped in.

When I linked that first post, I felt my breath leave me in a whoosh. I'd just opened my writing to critique. I'd stepped beyond my comforting circle of loyal and supportive readers and gave the go ahead to let me have it.

And did they ever let me have it!

Comment after comment of support, encouragement, questions, motivation. Twitter chats filled with suggestions, thoughts and commiseration.

All the amazing blogs and posts that I'd read over the months were filled with people who had the same insecurities, the same frustrations, the same aspirations as me.

They were my people.

And today, I'm their Featured Blogger.

Go check out The Red Dress Club. If you're a blogger, join. If you're not a blogger, start a blog and join. No. Seriously.

Trust me.

Jump in! The water's great!

5 comments:

mandyland said...

I know, right? lol

mandyland said...

Thank you so much! I have had so much fun that I can't believe it took me this long to join.

mandyland said...

Rock 'n' roll. Okay. That was lame. But it's late and I'm getting punchy.

Alexandra said...

This is so very cute, the way you've done this.

I think TRDC should feature this on your blog...b/c , really? I bet there's a lot of lurkers over there who say ,"who, me? naaaaaaaah... I can't write."

This? Just so adorable.

mandyland said...

Awww...thank you! If I had adorable dimples, I'd be dimpling right now. (My current dimples are of the knee variety. Not so adorable.)