My anniversary is coming up in a month.  In June of 2012, I began this grandmother blog.

So that will be my blogging anniversary. I’ve been thinking how to celebrate this milestone.  I’ve decided to dedicate the next several posts to the many friends I have made in the writing community. 

In the pre-blogging or pre-writing days, I had friends from PTA, synagogue, carpool, vacations, and childhood times. Nowadays, I have an extra category of friendships: my virtual writing friends. These are people who I got to know only through our mutual love of writing. I have met these people either online through a “group of writers” who correspond, or through a forum on a website of writers, or through an in-person writing group that evolved into an email relationship.

The next few  blog posts will be dedicated to some of those friends. Each one of those friends has given me encouragement in my writing journey, and I like to think I have given them that as well. But more than the writing topics we talk about, it is the casual chit-chat that is often “off-topic” that helped us build these friendships.

Just as we used to have “pen-pals” as children, and eventually would meet up with the pen pal in person, so too I have met some of my writer friends in person after many many interactions online, either via email or via messaging through a website. It truly is amazing to put a face to a name.

So stay tuned in the next several posts where I will discuss and refer to the writing buddies. I intend to link to some of their published work or blogs, so you can see what they are all about.

Check back in a day or so. To be continued in Part II of “Virtual Writing Buddies.”

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