When those devastating photos from Nashville started popping up on the news, my little Southern heart started breaking. After all, Nashville’s right up the road from Georgia, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time visiting there. Somebody should do something, I thought. I guess Amanda Morgan, Victoria Schwab and Myra McEntire, all Tennessee writers, had the same idea.

It’s called Do The Write Thing for Nashville and if you have a Facebook page, you can follow these women and all the fabulous writerly prizes they’ll be offering in an auction to raise funds for Nashville and Tennessee relief efforts. So if you’ve been stalling on the Facebook thing, grasshopper, here’s a good and worthy cause to motivate you to join.

And speaking of good and worthy causes, every year in May, Brenda Novak gets hopping on her Online Auction to Benefit Diabetes Research. My big brother was diagnosed with diabetes about ten years ago, so I think about him when pondering prizes. Not that Big Brother cares one iota what wonderful writing goodies I bid on…or that Big Brother even knows I write, for that matter.
Um, I’m fairly certain Big Brother knows I live in the Atlanta area. But that is not the point here, grasshopper.

The point is that TONS of folks in the writing community have come together to raise funds for causes near and dear to me. And even if I’m not one of those scathingly brilliant writers who can offer my services, I can do something. I can bid on those critiques, or evaluations, or books offered by all those scathingly generous writers, editors, agents and publishers.

So, don’t sit there like a grasshopper on a blog, wondering what to do. Every little bid helps!