Cool Kid’s Table – Guest Post

I have the great honor of presenting a guest post from one of my friends, Jim Lambert.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you may know that I’m part of a local critique group, and that these people have impacted and enriched my life. When Jim emailed a few of us with this piece, I jumped at the opportunity of sharing it on my blog.

Next week is Insecure Writer’s Support Group, and this would fit well with the theme. But in an effort to keep April’s posts short for the A-to-Z Challenge, I wanted to post this a week early.

I’m happy to be friends with this guy. And now, Jim…

Cool Kid’s Table

Do you remember high school? Most people do, it usually made quite an impression, good or bad. Remember the cliques? Remember the Cool Kids? And the Cool Kid’s Table. If you were cool enough, you got to sit at the Cool Kid’s Table. And you were a star.

Like a lot of what you learned in high school, that’s crap. Total BS. Absolute tommy-rot.

Because we are the Cool Kids.

A few years ago I started writing, and since then I’ve joined a bunch of groups related to writing. Including five critique groups. Yes, five. Yes, I am insane, thanks for asking.

One of those critique groups has twelve people in it, and I’ve become friends with everyone in it, and really good friends with some of them. We meet for dinner and beers before critique, we have write-ins at coffee shops and bookstores, me and some of the girls have breakfast together (quote from the group: “Shut up, Jim!”), we go to other events together, we even decided to do a podcast together. We’re friends.

So one day one of them comments, “I feel like I get to sit at the Cool Kid’s Table.” And each of us says, “Me too!” And we looked at each other and laughed, and chatted about how none of us felt like a Cool Kid, but we looked at the others and could tell they were. It was fine and fun.

And then it happened again. And again. And again.

Always in fun, just a quick comment about Cool friends, or Cool writers, or the Cool Kid’s table. And how lucky we were to be sitting at it.

And I finally thought, NO.

That’s not the way it should be. We are not supplicants at the Cool Kid’s table. We are not flunkies or toadies or hanger’s-on. We are not lucky to be sitting at the Cool Kid’s Table.

We ARE the Cool Kids!

We, every single one of us, are the Cool Kids. And we aren’t lucky, we DESERVE to sit at the Cool Kid’s Table.

No. The Hell with that.

We sit at the Cool Kid’s Table because we are the Cool Kids, and wherever we sit IS the Cool Kid’s Table.

And everyone is welcome. We are all Cool Kids, and until you PROVE otherwise, so are you.

Want to sit at the table with the Cool Kids? Pick a table, sit down. Mission Accomplished. You just made that the Cool Kid’s Table. Just don’t be a dick to the other Cool Kids at the other tables. We all deserve respect; we’re all Cool Kids.

And to Hell with anyone who says different.

About Jim

James T. Lambert (“call me Jim”) is a long time science fiction reader who decided to try his hand at writing the stuff a few years back. He planned on doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). That’s fifty thousand words in thirty days. First time he was two weeks late starting. “Maybe next year.” It was only held in November at that time. Next year he was a week late. “Maybe next year.” Next year he was three days late. “You know, I type fast. I can make up three days.” Now he needed a plot.

Steampunk. Going to the moon. In 1894. And, go!

He finished Steam Opera, then Aether Powered, then Proxies. He’s still working on Muse. And working with some other authors on Monster Marshals. So science fiction, Steampunk, and urban fantasy. He’s in four critique groups, and they tell him the stories need work. And they do. So they are all opened up on the surgical table and are slowly bleeding out. Once they’re resurrected, they’ll be sent out into the world to stagger about and cause havoc.

Please wait patiently.

Until then you can see his progress in building a website at http://jamestlambert.com.

Have you ever felt like you weren’t one of the cool kids? When was the pivotal point in your life when you realized you were one? Anybody else hungry now?

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