Renewals and Such

It’s that time of year again. Many of the online groups and forums I belong to are sending out the request to renew. Some I will, some I won’t. Last May (2008), when I first started this whole process, I went and joined a slew of groups – mailing lists, online forums, workshops…you name it, I probably looked at becoming a part of the community. And it’s a pretty extensive list, atm. But it’s an empty list, for the most part. I don’t reasonably have time to be part of all of them. The mailing lists are fine – most of the time I just lurk on them anyway…but I’ve been woefully neglectful of most of the forums.

Part of this is because I had no idea what I was doing when I signed up(and hell, I probably still don’t). I didn’t have a clue as to how the pubbing thing worked, or what I really wanted to write or how to go about doing it. The online groups seemed to be a good way to at least start…only problem was that many of them had it set up so that you had to be a member of RWA in order to join. I’m not entirely sure why this is, but I went ahead and signed up for RWA anyway. (And it’s not cheap – it was close to $100 for that particular membership). But it was my ticket in to a lot of these other resources, so in that respect I don’t regret it a bit. (And my first choice would have been SFWA, honestly – but they, like so many other groups, don’t let you join until you are pubbed, so RWA it was.)
But now that I’ve finally gotten my feet wet a bit, I don’t feel that unending need to join everything. I’m pickier about my workshops. Pickier about where I’m going to be spending my very limited time.
So that means dropping some of them. Probably going to dump out of RWA Online, for example. And most likely the RWA DC chapter as well. (I think I went to ONE meeting. I barely pay attention to the mailing list. And the other night I got a phone call from one of them, scandalized because my email address had bounced, and ZOMG, didn’t I want to read the newsletter? Obviously not.) Passionate Ink, also. I signed up for that because someone mentioned it as a good place, but in all honesty, I don’t fit in there. I haven’t been back in nearly a year. They’re all good people, but I’m not an erotica writer, as was so kindly pointed out to me a while back. And that’s fine – not all of us need to be. And while I admire their tenacity to fight the good fight between erotica writers and RWA and whether or not it counts as romance, it’s not something I can currently afford to spend my time or energy on. (I do hope they win, tho – RWA really does need to get its head out of its ass about certain subjects – erotica and epubbing being two of the big ones).
I’ll stick with Backspace for now, and FF&P. I’m sure there are others, but I probably won’t know what they are until the renewals show up. In which case, I’ll ignore. If I’ve gone this long without visiting, I don’t think there’s much point now.
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