Dear StoryMaster and StoryMistress

Dear The ScaryMaster and The StoryWitchress :

I would like to reach out and offer my thanks and congratulations on reaching the 24 year milestone of Writing.com. This is a community beyond what I ever dreamed was possible online, and it's all due to your personal hard work each and every day.

My story of finding WdC is described in minute, rambling detail in "My WdC Story" , which I wrote in February 2024 as a submission for a contest. I'll retell it here for you.

In June of 2023, I read a collection of Roald Dahl's short stories. These quirky, startling, zany tales ignited my imagination and set me on a path to write down my own story, one I'd been playing with and developing in my head for years.

By the beginning of July, I found myself with a 4000 word story on my hands and no one to share it with either in real life or online. I even ventured to ask a fashion research community I'm a member of if they were interested in reading it. Several people said yes, but when I posted the Google Doc link, nobody ever responded. Good grief, that was embarrassing

So I set out to surf the web, looking for a site where I could post my story for feedback, perhaps in exchange for sharing my thoughts about someone else's work; a sort of writer's swap club. When I found Writing.com and saw how it provides a free entry-level portfolio, email service and the ability to exchange reviews, I knew it was the place for me. I created my account on July 11th, 2023.

Within the first day I had a beautiful, admiring review of my story. I would have been quite happy to leave things at that, not yet considering myself a dedicated author, but two days later I was surprised with an anonymous Upgraded membership. This changed everything for me; I dove headfirst into WdC out of gratitude and a desire to "earn my keep," by making myself as useful to the community as possible.

In so doing, I unleashed a flood of creativity, and the rest is history.

I grew up in a home on an acre of land in Tennessee, and I'm proud to say that glorious outdoorsy setting featured heavily in my first story here. I draw frequently from my background and personal experiences to craft my stories, and many details of what I write are true to life, though heavily embellished and reimagined.

What I love about WdC is the strong sense of community. We are a big family, and even when things get stressful and problems arise between members, we all strive to maintain peace and tranquility on the site. For me, it provides a social media outlet far kinder and more fun and rewarding than X, and more engaging and exciting than Genius.

At the same time, I never lose sight of what WdC is at heart: a site for writers to write, read and review each other. All the delightful and potentially distracting trappings of social media are balanced by the intellectual aspects of crafting, managing and editing professional content for contests, projects and personal reflection.

I find this combination of online community and creative writing to be a unique and magical thing, a joy to participate in. I've watched the site grow and improve in just the short time I've been here, and I've made countless friends of diverse backgrounds from around the world.

The in-house markup language is also something I admire about WdC. Curly brackets and colons open up worlds of formatting opportunities to help our items look their best on the page. My favorite WML is probably {e:} with the ever-expanding selection of emoticons to choose from. Dropnotes are a writer's dream, providing something no other online writing system has: a way to neatly fold up important "fine print" where we can easily access it when we want.

So again, I extend a heartfelt "thank you" to SM and SMs for their dedication to maintaining Writing.com as a safe space for writers of all sorts to gather, interact, learn and grow.

May you live long and happily. Your efforts year in and year out are deeply appreciated. You've changed my life in ways I never expected that day I first signed up, and I have no doubt about the precious value of what you provide to the world.

Sincerely,

Amethyst Angel 🍁🙏

Word Count: 752.