By the time I was seven I thought of myself as a writer, or maybe a book maker or comic book artist. At any rate, I was writing stories in notebooks and making my own little illustrated stapled books, and reading as much as possible. I’ve been part of the world of literature for pretty much my whole conscious life. I first published in a national publication when I was a teenager, and my fifteen and sixteenth published books are due out in 2010.
In the mid nineteen-eighties, my husband Andy Weinberger and my brother-in-law Internet Guy David Weinberger brought me not quite kicking and screaming but muttering a lot into the world of computers. At first, my Zorba was for nothing but writing without having to retype. Well worth learning the stupid Word Star codes to avoid retyping. For a long time, I refused even to have a color monitor. I wanted my computer to be a writing machine.
But now, more than twenty years later, I spend at least an hour a day doing business by email; I keep three websites and upload to others. I do a Constant Contact e-newsletter for my local Integration organization; I write a newsletter on books that I email and post on my web page; I teach an occasional writing class online. I have also been blogging in a desultory fashion for a while, mostly posting an edited version of my private journal.
Now I’m going to try this blog, using WordPress on my web site, and I’m going to focus on what is happening to the written word in the social networking online world. Some of it is an unmitigated good– lots of small online zines for poetry, not to mention Garrison Keillor’s rich-mouthed daily readings at Writer’s Almanac– and some is scary. Book sales are way down– and for us so-called midlist writers (Gad I had that term)– book contracts are more and more difficult to find. It’s a moment when we stand at an abyss– unless, if you look at it a different way, it’s a vault to the stars.
Tags: internet, technology, writing, zines
Been writing ever since I found myself sitting under Pearl Buck’s behind as she was perched on a set of bleachers watching a parade. I was young and short, keep in mind, and she was the First Lady of Literature at Marlinton’s Pioneer Days–sometime way back in the mid-sixties. But as I was tracing her blue leg veins hanging down from under a thick silk like navy skirt, and just before her thick ankles blundered down into old lady shoes, there was a germ of a thought: gee, those leg veins must mean authors are real, flesh and blood, just like me, rather than abstract notions like presidents or war heroes. The germ began to sprout then: maybe I can be one, too. Ah inspiration to be something, to do something. We can’t always trace it back, and even if you can’t, we owe it to ourselves to follow that dream.
Love the view of Pearl Buck! I didn’t realize writers were people till college.