The personal touch is all it takes to get me smiling, reading and writing. It gets me feeling that sharing is really the only way. Oh, I appreciate the helpful tweets about markets and competitions, but they are for me, and others like me, when we’re in lurker mode. Grateful? Yes. But the post or the tweet is its own raison d’être, and who am I to complain? I may go there, or I may not. Depends on the work (in progress or not) and the mood. And, of course, whether or not, I am eligible by location, nationality, age, gender, you name it.
I’m a fragile being. I may have developed an antenna for discerning what are perhaps marketing motives, but I still love a real stroke over my sometimes ruffled feathers.
So a “Happy Fugu Day!” can mean much more to me than Valentine, 
although I did get a mention for that one several years ago, it being in the realm of marketing, I now realise. What I also realise is that I, too, am guilty, but back to my favourite fish. That Fugu Day wish brought me a story with which I was unfamiliar, and I fell in the “just fish” trap. Will you? Do read “A Family Supper” by Kazuo Ishiguro to see what I mean.
And this late afternoon over a delightful coffee and chat with a local writing friend – I’ll bring more about him in a future post – I was sent back to Franz Kafka’s “Ein Landarzt” and happy to find him intact at Gutenberg.
So you see, the personal touch, both online and offline, has brought me back to what I’m after: stories. Stories. For the s(t)ake of stories. No more. No less. Til’ next.
