Pages Written... 10+ for the week! WOO!
Listening to... WOW gaming

I heard through an email group I belong to that a woman I once was in a critique group with has died. In her sleep, on Tuesday.

She wasn't an exceptional writer, but her ideas were solid and her enthusiasm, huge. Sci Fi slash fantasy was her love, and she'd rattle on about her favorite shows and books if we let her. On a scholarship, she went to a writing conference in New York and wandered the city, wide eyed and eager.

In crit group, she always encouraged (even when something more constructive would have been nice). She always smiled, always seemed to see the sunny side of life, always asked about YOUR life and YOUR problems.

She did have challenges - no car, no printer, computer was old, job wasn't the best, lived with her mother, physically wasn't the prettiest speciman of human female. Money was a huge issue - a mutual friend paid her dues to a writing group. Then she lost her job. A year or so went by and she lost her mother. Another year or so went by, and she lost her health. She recovered, came back to a writing group (but had long since left the crit group), brought a friend, had a good job again, and a place to live.

And then she died. In her sleep.

I don't know how old she was, though she always felt older - certainly I percieved her to be sadder - than me. She worked on the same novel for over ten years. And yet, we are in the same place, she and I - neither of us have published anything.

It's hard to judge people without really knowing them, but we do it all the time. This time, her death is showing me in a light I'm not that thrilled with.

I'll go to her funeral. And then I'll come home, and write.

And remember.