From the Editor: Helping Others

How much time can a person give to help others with their writing?


It's a difficult question to answer. Can the time be measured in some kind of return? Vision is a labor of love. From the moment I took the idea to Holly and then rushed to get the first issue together for January 2001 until now, I have done the work because it helps others. I have only gotten two actual donations for it (though some people have been kind enough to donate articles), and it's really probably more work than it's worth. But I have kept at it, every two months for the last ten and a half years because I love the idea of putting together material that will help writers. It has not made me famous or rich or helped sell my own publications -- but I still love it.


Margaret McGaffey Fisk joined somewhat later and now J. A. Marlow has joined in the insanity. I couldn't do this ezine without their help. You can't devote this kind of time to something unless you really want to help others. You can't do work like this for free and not believe the reward is in something other than personal return. You have to believe you have presented something that someone else is going to use and make a breakthrough in their own work.


I ask myself, though, if I wouldn't rather be doing something for me. Wouldn't I much rather be writing on my work? Wouldn't I like to just drop Vision and move on?


Yes.


And no.


While I'm fighting to get the new issue done, I start adding up the hours, days, and months that have gone into this ezine. Oh, and funds, of course. There are months when that is especially painful. I get frustrated with the work. I find articles that are not properly formatted and that I shouldn't have accepted the way they were, since it takes me far too long to fix them. I decide (for reasons that I really can't recall now), to change the entire look of the ezine. I realize that I'm missing a few pieces, have completely screwed up contracts -- and that with one or two deletes I could just wipe Vision from the Internet and my computer and never have to go through this again.


I don't do it because I know that there will still come that moment when the issue goes live and I'll have a sense of accomplishment. That's the return -- the moment when I go to Vision: A Resource for Writers and see the wonderful articles, all the great help that others are offering to writers, and know that I've made it possible for people looking for help to find something that could change their own work.


My manuscripts are calling to me. I am working on the rewrite of a major set of books (somewhere between 12 and 15 novels). Reworking in this case means creating outlines based on the originals and rewriting everything. The series is older, the prose not the best in the world (which is an understatement), but the ideas are good, the characters are fun and a couple of the novels have pretty good plots lurking there hidden in all that angst and bad writing. In a few hours, this issue will be done and up (and with luck not have a lot of problems), and I'll be back to work on The Big Project and not really think about the work it takes for Vision for . . . oh, maybe a week or so.


So here it is -- a wonderful new issue. I hope you enjoy it! Read, learn things -- expand your writing world. That's our only goal.