My world opened up for me when I met my tenth grade English teacher, Miss Marshall. She looked to be 100 years old at least with her stark white hair and her cane. She required each of her students to keep a daily journal and when we arrived to class her journal entry was written on the chalkboard. We didn’t begin class until each of us had written our journal entry.
Now it was 1965 when I was in tenth grade – long before the journal craze began. But it began for me then. I was able to request Miss Marshall for English the next two years. She became my mentor and encouraged me to write, not just in my journal, but to write my stories as well. I joined the school newspaper ‘staff’ and wrote for the school yearbook. My major in college was English and I’ve taken numerous creative writing classes. I’ve also had a couple of jobs that required me to write.
I used to write long drawn out letters to my best girlfriend. She moved to the west coast after school. We would write pages and pages back and forth on life, our loves, the state of the world – whatever we were interested in at the time. Pre-internet, it was actually necessary to write and mail letters. The phone companies didn’t offer unlimited long distance either. So I would prepare my favorite tea, grab my favorite pen and paper and away I’d go. I would write sometimes for hours depending on how much catching up I had to do. I was in love with descriptive words and the structure of sentences and the physical sense of holding the pen and writing in longhand.
And then along came computers and the internet. And brevity became key and not just to keep load times down. That was the day of dialup connections. But because reading from a screen was new. That whole side-to-side reading thing was difficult with pre-set adjusted widths and terrible graphics.
So instead of writing for the sheer joy of writing, I became the queen of one-paragraph updates. And at first it was fabulous. I could stay in touch with everyone – send one paragraph to all of my friends and family at one time. I could even add images. So I didn’t just stop writing, I stopped thinking ‘descriptively.’
And soon I stopped writing longhand altogether. Since I began my blog in 2007, I haven’t kept a written journal. And I can’t remember the last time I wrote a letter to someone. And the most frightening thing is I don’t read as many books either. I have replaced reading and writing with the computer. I don’t want to give up my blog or the computer. I truly enjoy the friendships I have made through blogging and some of these friends have become not just blogging pals, but folks I exchange emails with. And the computer is such a valuable tool bringing the world to my desktop. I’ve seen museum exhibits and artwork that I never would have seen without it and being a curious sort, the internet offers me hours of entertainment. I just need to learn to balance my time with it.
I know it’s now January 6 and I should be finished with all this resolution and new year stuff. But I have been wrestling with this for a while and the new year brings new opportunities for beginnings, so
This year, I will write
–longhand-
I will write just for my own pleasure
I will make time to enjoy words
I will marvel at their simplicity and
Their ability to transform
I will play again
With words
Yes.
I will use a pen and my favorite paper
I will write for the sheer joy of writing
long paragraphs
or perhaps I will write
just one word.
And marvel at its simplicity.
This year I will write.
