*tap tap* Is this thing still on?

*blows dust off the blog*

Sorry for disappearing like that. Y'know how it is...work, husband, business trips, silly little writing contests that consume all waking hours and then some, until you're nothing but a zombie bathed in the eerie light of your laptop, pushing "refresh" until your index finger bleeds and gnashing your teeth or wailing with joy depending on what the screen deigns to show you...

No? The last bit doesn't sound familiar? Then you, my friend, were wise enough to stay away from the time suckage vortex known as Avon FanLit.

Here's how it worked: You were given a premise, and then had about 1500 words to put your spin on it. Then you threw it into the internet ocean and watched whether it sunk or swam, as the other participants rated it from 0 (bad) to 5 (excellent). They could also leave comments, although the comments were signed and so it became de rigeur to leave only positive feedback. It really didn't matter if you had writing talent or not. The waters were shark infested. Some got their jollies by leaving strings of 0's wherever they went, and woe betide the author whose chapter was in the reading rotation at the time.

And the contest even had voting controversy! No, no hanging chads and Supreme Court decisions, but it appears there were sock puppets and shifty accounting practices and user fraud. Some participants walked off with head held high (or were booted off) once it became clear their questions wouldn't be answered to their satisfaction.

I wasn't one of them. No, aside from a week where a business trip kicked my butt and I had zero free time, I participated.

It was the instant feedback. It's like a drug. I became a score junkie, even hustling my poor friends and family for "just one more five-star rating. Then I'll quit. Honest." When I finalled, I even turned to my work colleagues. Never mind that the Christmas party is coming up and I just gave them all the fodder they need for drunken teasing.

But the contest is over. I'm free. Free, I say! My brain finally belongs to me again, not to some marketing department deep in the bowels of HarperCollins (a Rupert Murdoch company, by the way...yes, it all comes together now. Not just content to rule the British newspaper and US broadcasting worlds, now he turns his thoughts of world domination to...romance writers. Oh, the humanity!)

(Um, Mr. Murdoch, you know I'm just kidding, right? Right?)

Seriously, I did learn some important things from FanLit. And since this is my expat journal, the one thing I learned that pertains to my expat experience is:

I miss being in a community of writers.

It's not like the UK isn't a literary place. In fact, as the UK is the country that has given us the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize, not to mention that more books are published here than in the US despite the huge difference in population sizes, the UK could be called a very literary place indeed.

Especially compared to LA, where the moving picture is king, and screenwriters are at the bottom of the pile (ever hear the joke about the actress who was so dumb, she slept with the writer to get a part?)

Although, LA has its literary tradition as well. Raymond Chandler. T.C. Boyle. Carolyn See. On the more popular side, Joseph Wambaugh and Michael Connolly (although he lives in Florida). Many more that I can't recall off the top of my head. Plus a terrific LA Times Festival of Books in April.

And UCLA Extension, which has a fabulous Creative Writing program. And which is where I met the members of the two critique groups to which I belonged when I lived in LA.

I'm sure there must be programs for writers in London. But I write fluffy, contemporary, female-focused, not-so-much-literary-as-populist stuff. In other words, the kind of fiction that gets you a look down the nose and a chin in the air from most other writers. And since Britain is, in my opinion, a culture where labels tend to be stuck on gleefully with prejudice aforethought, it's not a part of myself that I readily put out for public consumption (pimping my finalist entry to my officemates notwithstanding - hey, there were real prizes involved!)

I do belong to an online British group which is fabboo - although they also struggle with the more literary (read: pretentious & small minded) writers looking down on their genre.

But I miss the physical company of other writers. And part of my fascination - and mental struggle - with the Avon FanLit process is that while the instant feedback was fun (if a bit co-dependent-making), I wanted to have coffee with each and every one of the many writers on that site whose writing I adored. Pick their brains. Plan plot strategy. Commiserate over stubborn characters.

The internet is a wondrous tool, but it doesn't compensate for eye contact and verbal tone.