After the Party

Know that feeling you get just after the last guest goes home and you start picking up plates and glasses? You’re tired, you’re reliving conversations and moments, and you’re happy that your friends are indeed the best. Yes. It’s like that today.

Thank you to every one of you for helping make the Second Annual Writers Worth Day one of the coolest parties I’ve thrown. I was floored by how many of you took it upon yourselves to spread the word. The efforts – and the words – were inspiring and a fantastic validation of my theory that we’re all sick of inexperienced, desperate or unprofessional writers taking work that is beneath them. Thank you for getting the message out – that all of us suffer when one of us compromises his or her worth.

So what now? While it’s great that we came together on one day, it’s not enough. It won’t end in one day, nor will we affect change in writers, and in a few of these job postings, in 24 hours. It’s going to take all of us policing our counterparts, reminding writers to demand more and expect more. So whether it’s reminders on forums, mentoring a writer or two, or building an opinion of respect among peers, our work has just started. Let’s just consider Writers Worth Day to be the party that happens before the horses line up in the gates to get the job done.

Special thanks to those who posted after Friday – R. J. Medak, Sunday, Danielle Buffardi, and Horrible Sanity. You get the spirit of this, which is to continue the message beyond Friday. Thank you for your comments, your blog posts (Horrible Sanity and Danielle) and your continuing support of our market value and talents.

As promised, I visited Random.org to choose the winner of the Amazon card – the incentive for all who didn’t seem to need an incentive to post and help the cause.

Drum roll……..

Congratulations Tom Ellett! Of the 33 folks who posted, Twittered, or spread the news via LinkedIn, you were chosen as the recipient of the Amazon card!

Thanks again, everyone. I’ll be back tomorrow with my usual blog posting. Meantime, the dishwasher’s been loaded and it’s time I take a nap. Back to work tomorrow.

How did you celebrate Friday? Did you do anything extra? Did you spread the word? Do you think you changed any minds or helped someone to see their value?