Cinnamon Scones Part 2 – Tit for Tat

I write at Panera Bread two mornings a week. I like their cinnamon scones, but they don’t like me. Even if I eat a scone one day out of the two, I put on pounds, and not in good places. But my conscience prods me to purchase more than coffee when I use Panera’s electricity and/or WiFi for my computer, and their bathroom facilities and all that entails. It’s called tit for tat, and life is full of tit for tat opportunities.

You can look as close as your writer friends for these opportunities. When you need brainstorming help, a quick critique, advice, or to find something, your writer friends are there for you. Are you there for them as readily? Implied in friendship is to be there when a friend is in need.

Some people call it paying it forward. Romance Writers of America (RWA) is full of published and multi-published writers helping and mentoring unpublished, soon-to-be published and newly-published writers. Sharing their knowledge and their experience. Sharing their precious time as, perhaps, someone else did with them on their publishing journey. Paying it forward.

As I have a sense of debt at Panera, I surely have a sense of debt to my brother and sister writers—in RWA and its online chapters, in the RWA sisters I’ve met at conferences, in my wonderful local MVRWA chapter, to the Panera Prison inmates, and in my friends from another local writing group, NWOWF. I hope I share a give and take with other writers, that it’s not all just take, take, take on my part. I know I don’t feel a sense of entitlement; however, I never want to impose too much on other writers’ limited time or be a time vampire or idea vampire. I want to help as much as I receive help.

How do you feel about tit for tat?