I did NOT forget you, my lovelies!

But I must leave you with only an awesome video... not new, but hilarious and fun. There are reasons for my prolonged and boring silence, and I apologize.

I hope this will make up for it:

Unconventionality

Social media has revolutionized the way writers interact - with each other, with readers, with the publishing industry. Not every writer is on every platform, or even necessarily on any of them! (But, er, clearly you are, gentle reader, or how else would you come to be here?)

I have to say: I love it.

I've also grown weary of sweeping proclamations. It seems that every day some person somewhere on the internet says, "X is changing the face of publishing!" But social media is one of the values of X that I believe to be true, and one of the ways it's doing so are through contests.

Seriously! I knew they happened, the fabulous Authoress runs some well-attended ones regularly, but I don't think I realized just how popular they've gotten - and how many agents are not only willing, but eager to participate.

Writing contests, as they exist in the blogosphere, are fabulous because while they shake up the traditional path to publication by ending with critiques or even offer of representation for some authors - in a method that mostly didn't exist until very recently and is dramatically different than the norm - they are also fun. For everyone involved!

I've entered a few recently, including the First Line Grabber competition on Authoress's blog last month. (Or was it earlier this month? I can't keep track of time in my old age, it seems...) The spirit of friendly competition among fellow writers is rivaled only by the support they give one another. For something that is so often a solitary activity, it's a wonderfully refreshing change of pace.

And as these contests multiply in number, and are elevated in profile, there is frequently the promise of Lurking Agent Eyes (tm). Which is just so cool, and these LAEs frequently drop by to leave comments, offer feedback, or even surprise-attack folks with page requests!

Publishing has its challenges right now, to be certain. But I honestly can't think of a more exciting time to be around and part of a vibrant, giving community - that still knows how to have fun.

And I think this kind of unconventionality and the willingness to explore new, fun ideas is a predilection that will keep publishing alive and prospering for a long time yet.

Have you entered any blog contests recently? How'd it go? Inquiring minds want to know!

(Inquiring minds also ask that you pay no notice to the fact that by EDT standards it is technically no longer Monday. Time is but an illusion, and Monday finds this Tuesday dress to be quite slimming.)

Monday is only here for a quick laugh

It is late on Monday, and I am straddling some strange mix of exhaustion and productivity. I don't have anything particularly wise or salient to add this week, so I shall instead share a video with you.

If you haven't seen already, Rachel Hawkins shared this song a few days ago and single-handedly helped propel it to viral status, at least within the YA community. It's fun and cheesy and a little dumb, but I enjoy it. Perhaps a bit too much, since I listened to this song approximately four hundred million zillion times last week.

So. Now I inflict it all on you.



You're welcome.

The Importance of Doing Your Homework

This post is not about like, actual homework homework. Although it could be, since I'm several weeks behind in the reading for a class I'm taking and man, is it a pain. Also, you may not shoo me away because I read like a zillion pages today in my efforts to get back on track, so neener neener.

The 'homework' I'm talking about right now is your writing homework. Otherwise known as research.

I hear complaints from various friends about inaccuracies, largely in TV shows, of the CSI and Law & Order types. The fabulous Elizabeth May has schooled me on the myriad forensic inaccuracies in Bones, and every once in a while I'll squint at something I watch or read and silently wonder about its veracity.

Truth is, though, it's not usually something I, as a reader or watcher, pick up on all that much. But tonight? Oh, tonight I did.

While catching up on last week's episode of The Vampire Diaries (which - no new episodes for a month? really, CW?) one of the characters who is like, mad old, narrates what the field around them used to look like a thousand years ago. "Wild horses used to graze in that field," he says at one point.

Cue record-scratching.

Hold up. Did you say horses?

I went back and checked again. Yes, yes he did. See, Vampire Diaries is set in Virginia. Horses in North America went extinct somewhere between 10,000 and 7,500 years ago. They didn't reemerge until they were introduced to the Americas by the Europeans in, oh, the sixteenth century.

Now granted, this is possibly not what I would call common knowledge? And also, I am an enormous nerd. But this is why it's so important to get your facts straight, or at least know how to embellish or misdirect when you're stretching the truth.

Because if you get it wrong, you're going to throw somebody out of your story. Suspension of disbelief is the cornerstone of fiction, and if you pull the carpet out from your own work, you do no favors for anyone.

Have you ever gone back to your writing and realized you got the facts really, really wrong? Or, barring that, what's the most egregious example of Didn't Do The Research that you've seen? (Warning: Link goes to TV Tropes. Click it and lose hours of your life at your own discretion.)

Words to Live (and Write) By

There have been a number of posts lately that I've stumbled on - related to writing and the publishing industry, natch - that have just made me sit up, take notice, and say Yes. That. That so hard.

Some of these posts are not particularly recent, but that's the great thing about the internet: The advice sticks around. It's not going anywhere. And sometimes, it's just what I need to hear.

So in case any of you may find these posts as informative or encouraging or just downright timely as I have, I'd like to link to a few of them here:

Firstly, an article last month from Salon about The Death of the Celebrity Memoir.

An oldie that's made the rounds by now, but is always worth linking, is Rachel Stark's incredibly detailed and thoughtful analysis on Cover Trends in YA Fiction.

Adrienne Kress has a fantastic post about querying and seeking publication: It's Not About The Odds.

Just this month, rockstar agent Jenny Bent (of The Bent Agency) weighed in on some of the changes she's seen in her 20 years in the publishing industry: My How Things Have Changed.

And I just recently stumbled across an old post of Natalie Whipple's that I've had bookmarked for ages, called What I Really Want to Say to New Writers. Every word of it is gold.

So, friends! Have you ready anything lately that's particularly stuck with you? If there's anything around the blogosphere that you've enjoyed and think I've missed, please share in the comments!

Sometimes metaphors can be taken too far.

MY MOTHER (on the phone): So I feel like this whole process of sending your book out into the world sounds almost like giving birth.

ME: You know, I think that's when you're writing it. Or after you've sold your book and it's going to be released for real for-reals. Trying to find an agent is more like... trying to get pregnant.

MOTHER: I think that metaphor can go dangerous places if you don't put it in park now.

ME: That's probably true. Excuse me, I need to go tell the internet that I just compared querying to trying to get pregnant. To my mother. I feel like the internet might have something to say about this.

A few minutes later, the internet had some things to say about this:



And this is why you should pick your metaphors carefully.

And if you're really pedantic, you'll know this is why you should know the difference between simile and metaphor, because I have been misusing them throughout this entire blog post.

And if I've traumatized you with regards to queries, you ain't seen nothing until you've read some Philip Roth. You want to see the power of metaphor? You'll never look at an apple the same way again.

Monday, Monday, gotta get down on... wait. Who are you?

I feel really guilty sticking you guys with a video, but I am editing like crazy (both my own stuff as well as some thesis work for a friend), and also have homework because I am taking a once-a-week class thing? And like, there's homework again? And I was never particularly good at this stuff when I was IN college, so now that I checked out of that thing years ago my brain is like, "Lol wait, what?"

So, um, I love you all. Have a funny video:

Changing Times (or: Authors as Rock Stars)

I'm going to come right out and say it: I'm not that old. In fact, I'm a downright youngin' compared to some of you lovely people, and compared to some of my dearest writer friends. I grew up in the 90s; I've never owned an Ace of Base CD, I don't remember the Exxon-Valdez oil spill, and I was too young to get into either Fraggle Rock or ThunderCats.

I haven't had my 5-year college reunion yet. I sometimes frown in consternation when household chores don't mystically do themselves. I own a cheese grater, though I'm not entirely sure why. If the Power Rangers knocked on my door tomorrow and asked me to fight evil with them, I'd probably say yes. (So long as the original Blue Ranger was there. Because: BILLY!)

Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that I am still a bit of a wee one.

But I'm old enough to remember when things were different. I'm talking about books, here - and YA books in particular. All of us know the general zero-to-sixty history of the YA book market, which experienced exponential growth with the advent of the Harry Potter series and continued to metastasize over the next 10 years.

Thousands of YA books are published every year now. There's money in the market, lots of sales, and a recent report revealed that in 2011 young adult book deals made up the vast majority of 6- and 7-figure deals to authors.

I kind of take this for granted sometimes. This is sort of the new normal for us, as it were. We've come to expect it.

But I'll tell you what's different - and a lot more recent. More and more lately have I seen books and authors, and excitement for both of those things, hyped up in the mainstream entertainment industry. A lot of this is surely due to the enthusiasm that started with Harry Potter, that carried over with Twilight, and seems to be continuing with The Hunger Games. Loads of people, including many who've never even read the books, have watched and loved these movies - or in the case of THG, anticipate them just as much as the rest of us.

Movie adaptations have been made out of books for approximately a thousand years, but for the first time the reaction is not, "That was a book?" or "They always screw it up" or even "I don't want to see something based on a book". The reaction is, "I read these books and I can't wait for the movie".

Books aren't the dirty little secret or the kicked-around kid sister of the entertainment industry anymore.

I'm thinking of Tahereh Mafi's exclusive cover reveal a few months back, which was hosted by MTV. Mafi also wrote an op-ed that was featured in the Wall Street Journal, and I saw an ad recently for SHATTER ME in Entertainment Weekly.

My fabulous friend Miranda Kennealy's book CATCHING JORDAN was reviewed with glowing praise by SEVENTEEN magazine.

These are only two examples, really, because they're the only ones I can think of off the top of my head and I haven't saved the links. But I've been seeing more and more of this kind of thing, and it makes me so passionately, inexplicably happy.

I never thought when I was a kid, or even a teen - as both a writer and read of YA fiction - that I would see a day when writers were written up in Seventeen Magazine, when their books were featured on MTV or where bookstores would be so intimidated by crowds they opt instead to hold author events in the local Hyatt (John Green I'm looking at you).

I'm old enough to remember when things weren't this way at all, but I am so, so glad they are now and I hope this never changes.

Authors have always been my rock stars. I'm glad to see the rest of the world catching on.

Feedback (Paying It Forward)

I did some editing/beta-reading for a friend today. It was on an article that was only 5,000 words long, but it's the first time I've done this in quite a while.

That's a slightly ironic feeling, since people have been reading for me for the better part of a year.

The whole thing took me a little over an hour. I had the time to set aside as soon as I received the piece in question, which was fortunate. But I had forgotten what an involved process it is. How hard, how challenging, it is to not just read something and be able to identify what works or not, but then to come back and explain, to make editorial suggestions, to not just be critical but constructive.

It's the difference between saying "This didn't work for me" and "I know how to make this better".

I felt out of breath by the time I finished. Editing those 5,000 words for my friend was almost as challenging as if I'd had to write 5,000 new words on my own story.

And I'm so, so glad I did it. I have a few more things on my plate now, more work by more people that I've committed myself to. And even though it's daunting, and challenging, and time-consuming, it's one of the best ways I can think of to give back to the friends and the community that has been so supportive - and so willing to go out of its way to help me, when I am nobody.

I can't do this for everybody. I'll never have that kind of time. But I no longer feel like I am just taking and taking, accepting generous favor after favor without anything to contribute in turn. The community of writers is an extraordinarily gracious and giving one, and it's important to pay it forward; to keep that momentum going.

There are a million ways to do that. But for now, this is mine.

Who has helped you along your writing journey - and what are you doing to pay it forward?

They love me! They really love me!

I have been bouncing in my chair cheerfully, grinning ear-to-ear for about an hour now. Why? Because I just got the very first full set of comments from one of my beta readers. I was crazy nervous about this, both because letting other people read your stuff is scary but also because this was kind of the make-or-break moment, wasn't it?

The first person to read this close-to-final draft. The point by which I'd done massive amounts of rewriting already, added and deleted characters and changed entire portions of the story, plot points, motivations. If the story still didn't work for my readers, I probably would have panicked.

And there's no guarantee - I may still have to panic, depending on what others say. But for now, it seems I am safe! My beta reader was hugely complimentary and gave me lovely notes, things she loved but also brilliant, succinct ideas on how to tweak the things she didn't - and those tweaks are small and pretty fast and relatively easy, considering the huge labor pains that involved rewriting this novel in the first place.

(Say it with me: If I got through that second draft, I can get through anything.)

Another writer friend - one who is quite busy with her own writing and quickly becoming Quite A Big Deal in her own right - also reached out today and offered to read my query.

I am floored by the outpouring of support from my friends and community. 10 months ago, I did not have a single writer friend. Today, I am so very blessed to be surrounded by some of the most amazing people I've ever met.

I know I've said this before, but it really can't be said enough: Having a community, as writers, is so important. I never would have kept my sanity, let alone gotten as far as I have, if it weren't for writer-friends, the internet on which we hang out, and the Twitter on which we congregate.

This is totally cheating.

But Monday is exhausted and braindead, and also forgot it was Monday.

So let's just all rap together:

For the World to See

I have returned from my trip, and despite being jetlagged and overtired and hungry at odd hours, I do think I'm making a good deal more sense than I was last week.

Since I got back late Friday night, I have been pretty darn productive. I unpacked, did laundry, cleaned my apartment, went grocery shopping, made new To-Do Lists and tossed old ones, and finished the third draft of the novel. (That last one's not as impressive as it sounds. I only had two chapters left.)

And then, my friends, I sent it off to my group of beta readers.

That's right. A whole group of people! Who are going to read a book. That I wrote.

Ruh roh.

I was talking to a dear writer friend about this stage of the process, and how both exciting and nerve-wracking it is. I mean, you want people to read your stories, right? That's why we write them! But at the same time, it removes all plausible deniability you might have had, from your friends or family or coworkers or casual Facebook acquaintances. You can't be all like "yeah I write sometimes there's this story that maybe someday IDK just give me the vodka".

Now you're all like, "Yeah. I wrote a book. That's a thing that I did. Shit."

There's a lot of reasons that's a good thing. There can be a few drawbacks, though. If your friends are anything like mine a bunch of them will be lining up going, "Oh oh oh when can I read it!" and you want to be all NEVER but then you'd feel bad and also, maybe they'll buy it when it's on shelves someday. But I'm not going to e-mail my book out to all 300 people who send me pleading Facebook messages.

My beta readers are writers - published and non - or book reviewers or avid readers in the genre that I write or, ideally, some combination of the three. The same way a painter would not be expected to make 3,000,000 photocopies of their own work and stick them in just as many envelopes to mail out to their friends, so too should writers not be expected to provide ON DEMAND access to our work.

Like, I want to sell that shit someday, yo. You want to read it, pony up.

But one way or the other, if we're successful, these people are all going to have the ability to read it someday.

And that's pretty cool.

How do you feel about sharing your work with the world? Does the idea excite you? Terrify you? Are you close to having to consider it as a Really For Real-Reals Possibility, or are you not yet to this RIDICULOUSLY TERRIFYING portion of the publishing journey? Please share!

Shaking Things Up

I am leaving for a work conference tomorrow morning on the other side of the universe country. I am currently running around packing like a madman, scrambling at the last minute because I ALWAYS DO THIS and I had to wait until tonight to get my suitcase repaired, pick up my dry cleaning, declare peace between the Montagues and Capulets and somehow manage to get a full night of sleep and be perky and professional and Ronald Reagan International tomorrow. Ugh.

My life, people. My life.

In the meantime, I'm trying to finish the last three chapters on this draft of my WIP (please, celestial beings, let me be DONE ALREADY) and as such this trip comes at a slightly inconvenient time. But maybe it'll push me. I don't know.

(insert Salt n Peppa's "Push" here)

There is really no coherent string of thought behind this post, besides the fact that it's Monday so I had to grace you all with my crazy ramblings, and also I wanted to say hi. Hi, internet!

I will be back, and hopefully a bit more coherent, on Saturday. Late Friday night, actually, but I promise there will be no coherence involved there. Only jetlag.

What are your plans for this post-holiday week? The (other) holiday season is fast approaching. What are you doing to shake things up?

When You Knew

Lots of writers have always wanted to be - or indeed, always have been - writers. In some way or another. They'll talk about how they were born with a Marble notebook and ballpoint pen in hand (which, God bless your mother!) or how they sat daydreaming story ideas in sixth grade or accidentally entered a Poetry.com context when they were 9 and it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.

I'd always written. I was one of those babies who needed to be delivered via C-section because Five-star binders full of wee toddler stories just weren't designed to pass through certain places, know what I'm saying?

In first and second grade, in my first school back when I still lived in NYC, every year each kid would get a hardcover, totally blank white book. About A4 paper-size, maybe 20-30 pages on the inside. We got to write and draw our own stories as an assignment. I imagine you would respect me a lot less if I told you it was about a distinctly self-insert character who lost his pet hedgehog just before the school show-and-tell fair. But I just accidentally told you anyway, so there's that.

I'd always written. But I never thought of myself as a writer, even though I wrote constantly and weaved stories out of every single thing and took Creative Writing classes in middle school and read like books were oxygen and I was gasping for air. It didn't occur to me that this was A Thing I Could Do, Like For Reals until maybe halfway through high school.

But I should have.

A year or so ago, I was going through a collection of my things that had been boxed up and put in storage when I moved away to college. I'd been far from this storage space ever since and hadn't gone through my belongings there in five years or so. Going through my collections, I found that first hedgehog story from when I was but a wee young lad.

But it wasn't the sad saga of Ricky the Missing Hedgehog that made me realize I was destined to lead the life of a writer whether I liked it or not. It was the inscription I'd written on the inside of the front cover, that read something along the lines of:

(C) 1994 RICHARD LIPMAN. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should know it is stolen property and the author received no payment.

I cracked up when I discovered the wily ways of my 7 year-old self, and immediately showed my mother. We decided I was stuck on the writer's path, pretty much, come hell or high water.

So. When did you know - know for sure - that you were a writer? Share your stories in the comments!

The Importance of Unplugging

There is absolutely no science to support what I'm about to say. (Since when has that stopped me?) But honestly, the older I get, and the more time I spend on the computer - for work, for entertainment, for social networking, for a dozen other things - the shorter my attention span becomes. The more anxious, sometimes, I become. And like many folks, sometimes I get internet fatigue.

This is mildly alarming, since the internet and I have been BFFs for quite a long time now and 99 percent of the time, if you tried to take Twitter away from me I would clobber you over the head with a frying pan. But every once in a while, I stare longingly at the "off" button on my wireless connection, wishing I had the willpower to turn it off voluntarily.

That would, of course, never happen.

So I did the next best thing: I went camping this past weekend. Anyone who knows me should probably take pause at that sentence. I do not do the whole communing with Mother Gaia Earth Outdoors Thingy particularly well. I'm pampered and spoiled and my idea of 'unwinding' usually tends to involve more cabana boys bringing me fruity drinks as I lay by the Puerto Rican shoreline and less 'Nature! Nature IN MY FACE!'

But I did it anyway.

It's important, as writers, to stretch outside of our comfort zones every once in a while. Writing what you knows gets old - and uninteresting - pretty quickly if you don't know a whole lot. I've talked a bit about this before on my own blog, the phenomenon that my friend Erin calls "replenishing the well". So that's what I took this weekend to do.

It's not just about finding inspiration in the unusual, or the outside world. Sometimes it's about stepping away from the world you know. I had zero cell phone service for close to 48 hours. No phone calls or e-mails or Twitter. I missed Twitter (though truly, I did not lament the loss of e-mail notifications for just about anything). But I needed it. I needed to take a breath.

I'm refreshed now, despite sleeping on the wooden floor of a poorly-insulated cabin and somewhat freezing my tuchus off the other night, because camping in Virginia in the middle of November is what some people would refer to as 'silly'. I'm refreshed in spite of inhaling the ashes of a giant bonfire all weekend, or having to pee in a batch of what I strongly suspected to be poison sumac, or hiking about a hillside looking for firewood and coming up pathetically empty-handed.

I'm refreshed.

I could do with some more time away from the back-and-forth of everyday life - couldn't we all? - though I think I maxed out my enjoyment of forfeiting my memory foam mattress. But the breathing, the action of stepping back, even if just for a day or two, is always so much better for me than I anticipate going in.

(I tend to project worst-case scenarios. Thinking things such as 'But I will be in the woods in the middle of NOWHERE and someone important will call me - the President, what if it's the President? And I can't ANSWER! And also there are BEARS, and since I did not bring my computer it may resign in protest, dousing itself in gasoline like a Buddhist monk and going up in FLAMES and then the President of the United States will think I'm not returning his calls because I ran off with the Prime Minister of Greece when really, I've just been mauled beyond recognition by a bear. HOW DID ANYONE TALK ME INTO THIS?!')

But none of those fears came true.^* And I'm better for the experience. I have a bit more focus and perspective now, and I mentioned on Twitter last week that I was beginning to get a bit down/discouraged about my writing journey. I feel a bit more confident, or at least calmer now. But the demons of doubt reach everybody once in a while, and it's important to be able to run for the hills.

So when's the last time you took a step back to breathe? Really, truly breathe? And how did it affect you - and your writing?

^{* The President did call, but my secretary got back to him in a timely fashion, I'm assured.}

Welcome to the Jungle

Hello, mes amies, and welcome to the first official post in the YA Warehouse's weekly roster. This post is long, and for that I apologize. I hope you find me as entertaining as the nice men in white coats who bought me this lovely jacket. As you can see in our inaugural post, I am the Prince of Darkness Mondays.

Mondays are a funny thing. They get a bad rap, some might say, but I think it's totally deserved. I mean, at best, you wake up and it's Just Another Frakking Day, and you have to brush your teeth and find your glasses and figure out what you did with your favorite red panties and why there are 13 empty bottles of champagne in your kitchen... and then get ready for work.

At worst, you could wake up on a Monday and have to go straight to the dentist. This was me today, my pretties. And I realized, as I was getting cavities drilled this morning to the ka-ching! sound of my emptying bank account, that dentists are really the most brilliant - and sadistic - scammers of all time. The Nigerian princes of the world could learn a thing or two from the D.D.s.

Think about it. I am paying this dudebro HUNDREDS of DOLLARS, which are like money-units, to stick a drill in my face at 10AM and go digging like the freakin' Spanish colonial gold-miners from Pocahontas. Ostensibly for my own good, and in a building where 'Dr. Longman's House of Pain' appears on not a single sign. How does that work?

But yes, yes, I get it. Teeth are important.

You know what else is important - especially to writers? Community. (Whoah! My transitions, they are smooth and flawless. Don't act like you're not impressed.)

Lots of people talk about this. Probably more than talk about dentistry. Writing is a creative outlet, and like most other creative outlets it is emotionally exhausting, incredibly complex - and highly solitary.

Writing is lonely.

You knew that already, of course, but you might be - like I was - unsure of how to break into the Great Mafia of the Writing Community. Or you may be anxious, because look at all those other writers, who know people and have friends and go to fancy cupcake dinners or on writing retreats or to conferences or start group blogs! I will never be like them!, you wail. I will be alone forever!

'Tis not true, my precious.

Writers conferences and conventions are a great way to meet people, but the time and money required can be prohibitive for lots. The internet is where it's at, and not just for message boards of twitterchats - the internet is where I met my very real, flesh-and-blood group of fellow writers and crit partners, all of whom live in my own backyard and do fun things with me like go to midnight showings of Harry Potter or drink margaritas or have fancy crepes for dinner, or maybe do all of those things at the same time.

A little over six months ago, I had no writing community to speak of. Absolutely none. I had one writer-friend in real life, but she lived quite far away and I hadn't seen her in years. I did not know any writers, or where to find them, or if I'd mesh with them once I did find them, or if they'd be okay with genre writing or YA or or or a hundred other things.

Cue: Twitter.

Twitter can be intimidating - and confusing - at first, and I understand that. We'll address a bit later on how to use it more effectively but right now, I'm just here to say: If you're a writer (particularly an aspiring and/or lonely writer) and you are not currently on Twitter, you should be.

I can't imagine what I would have done, or how I would have kept the last vestiges of my fragile sanity over these last few months, as I've gone through two additional drafts on my own manuscript. (Shush. I can hear you all impugning my claims of sanity, and that is rude.) My writer friends have been my cheerleaders, mentors, given me criticism when I needed it, rooted for me when I needed positive energy, taken me out for cupcakes when I needed diabetes.

You need to have writer friends. You will go nuts if you don't.

I was without a writing community for many years. I was quite unhappy. But you don't have to be.

Yes, the internet is a big place. And yes, it's intimidating - it's a jungle out there! But the advent of technology has allowed us to build a world that is smaller, more layered, easily searchable. It brings people together based on shared loves and interests, can tell you with the click of a button who your neighbors are. Twitter's writing chats, the blogosphere, Absolute Write, Forward Motion, and many other places exist to help WRITERS LIKE YOU connect with other WRITERS. Who are JUST LIKE YOU! But maybe not as neurotic.

So if you ache for community, if you feel like you're going stir-crazy on your own, and if you need writer friends? And if, like me, you ever thought that you didn't know where to look, or were too intimidated to engage: Stop being intimidated! Go on Twitter, and message boards, and comment on blog posts, and let people find you! We're not that scary! We're a friendly bunch, and we have all been lonely at some point.

The water is warm. Come play.

And welcome to the jungle.