I'm sure a lot of people here have either received this phrase or sent it. Or both! There's that one person whose writing you admire. You love every prompt they put up. You look forward to reading them. You want so much to write to them, but for whatever reason you don't.

Maybe it's fear. You don't want to be rejected by this person that you admire so much. You figure if you just watch from afar they'll never know how bad a writer you think you are.

Maybe it's intimidation. You don't think you can keep up with them. You don't think that you can match the six paragraph prompt they just wrote (not realizing that they probably don't expect you to). You put them up on a pedestal, making them out of reach to someone like you.

Maybe it's the assumption that they must have a lot of responses already. This has come up time after time in various meta's, but you might be very surprised by the truth. After all, they are on the "hot" page with 14 upvotes and a bunch of comments - they must be drowning in replies, right? I can't speak for everyone, but a lot of people I know, male and female, rarely get responses even if they consistently get a lot of upvotes. I've lost count of the number of times I've gotten the message, "I really liked what you wrote but I'm sure you have tons of replies already," when in actuality their message is the first one my inbox has seen in weeks.

So, the purpose of this meta is twofold.

First is discussion. Do you have someone you wish you could write with? Did one of these scenarios ring true for you? Is there something I missed? Or are you someone who has gotten this message? Do you have any success stories that came out of it? Maybe that will encourage more people to just go for it.

Second is a challenge. I challenge everyone to go out and write a private message to someone that they have always wanted to write with. Just compliment their work, tell them which one of their prompts you particularly enjoyed, anything positive. What's the worst that can happen? If they don't reply, well maybe they are as busy as you've always assumed. If they do reply, it's highly unlikely they will have anything bad to say to a compliment (If they do, well now you know they aren't as great a person as you thought).

Who knows, it might be the start of something new for both of you?