I enjoy helping people. Recently I received some help on a project I definitely could not have done myself, all alone, little old me. I’d like to pay it forward.
The project I’m talking about here that I needed to accomplish involved replacing only about six feet of flexible line for my fuel delivery system. Sounds easy until you realize the entire fuel tank needed to come off the vehicle. Just like a Drink needs a Mug; Just like a Skull needs a Brain, I needed Help with a capital letter. By the numbers it looked like this:
3 brothers
6 feet of fuel tubing
16 dollars for the tubing
25 bolts and nuts
227 jokes
Totally worth it, especially if you consider one last quantification: an auto shop would have charged 300 dollars for labor on that particular project. And I probably wouldn’t get but one joke out of an auto shop mechanic. Soooo worth it.
How I want to help others is not so much automotive, although I’m not opposed to helping turn a wrench now and then. What I’m thinking of is how I’ve noticed a few people asking for help from the #writingcommunity on Twitter. The requests are here and there, and the assistance is the same—sporadic. Sometimes the questions get answered, and other times they don’t even get noticed. What I’m proposing is to schedule the help sessions to one day. Wednesday. I want to call it “Hump Day Help” and I’ll link it to the writing community with both hashtags, like so: #writingcommunity #humpdayhelp. In this way, it will be more visible and more likely to help those who are new to the community.
This will be helpful to me as well. I’m not saying I will only help people. My first question will be what title to use for my new novel. I’m favoring Fille Fatale, but I wonder if it’s too much French for the reading public. Will they look at the title and make the assumption that the inside is all French as well?
Regardless of the answer to my question, the Hump Day Help will be for those who want to pay it forward also. There are lots of people who feel successful and knowledgable enough to offer advice. They could even use the tag to say, “Here I am, if you need to ask me any questions, start asking.” And I’m sure they will.
Just like my brothers, there are many generous souls out there in the world ready to make a project 227 times better than it would have been without their help.
Xenosthesia.com 