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The Saving Graces of Social Media

IMG_1136It’s all about perceptive when discussing the pros and cons of social networking. True, there are quirks about Twitter and Facebook and their internet compatriots. Used poorly, they can appear narcissistic or snarky or just plain cruel.

But this week, I read an excellent article in Salon by Julia Fierro, where she highlights a redeeming side to social media. Read it if you haven’t already (especially if you’re a doubter). These are only a few of my favorite quotes:

If you ask the people who know me in real life…they’ll call me friendly, outgoing, maybe even gregarious. A charming conversationalist. The kind of person who can be warm with friends and strangers alike. And I can be, but only in two- to three-hour bursts. After the time limit expires, so does my social-emotional tolerance.

. . .

I’m a closeted introvert. I crave daily social interaction, but I feel so much for, from and around people, that it quickly depletes me.

. . . 

But it quickly became clear that my particular situation (I work from home) and personality (obsessive introvert) made social media my blessing in disguise. It is socializing on my own terms. I feel genuinely close to my online friends, but I can slip into a conversation, and slip out. I can log on, and log off. And, in my busy midlife years, when I am “having it all” — balancing professional success, a writing life and family — these are the only relationships I have time for.

I am an introvert just the same; it takes me a long time to warm up to a crowd. Ask my own family. There are moments–even at a simple dinner–when I am more comfortable in front of the sink washing coffee cups than sitting around the table talking. And, it isn’t necessarily because I love doing dishes.

DSCN5673But Fierro brings up another reason that attests to why I love social media: the time factor. For me, it isn’t only how much or little time I have to visit with friends (online or in person), but the time I don’t have to read all the great essays and articles published by writers, about writers, on the craft of writing. I depend on my Twitter and Facebook friends to keep me updated and to connect me to links I have missed in rush of my daily routine.

Like this interview with Lorrie Moore (found via Longreads), which was my true saving grace yesterday. Moore says:

From the time I first started writing, the trick for me has always been to construct a life in which writing could occur. I have never been blocked, never lost faith (or never lost it for longer than necessary, shall we say) never not had ideas and scraps sitting around in notebooks or on Post-its adhered to the desk edge, but I have always been slow and have never had a protracted run of free time.

And later, when asked directly if she was saying she had no other choice but to be a writer, she responds:

Well, that’s all very romantic, and I can be as romantic as the next person. (I swear.) But the more crucial point is the moment you give yourself permission to do it, which is a decision that is both romantic and bloody-minded—it involves desire and foolish hope, but also a deep involvement with one’s art, some sort of useful self-confidence, and some kind of economic plan.

. . .

I wasn’t at all sure whether I would be able to survive as a writer for the rest of my life. But I decided to keep going for as long as I could and let someone else lock me up for incurable insanity.

Uncertainty (and insanity) about my journey as a writer invades my thinking daily. It’s through online finds like this one–through social media–that remind me 1) I am not alone and 2) it’s worth the fight.

What saved you this week?

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Writers at the Table: Meet Richard Borchers

IMG_0562Once a month, I meet with writers at the Harwood Place retirement living center, and every so often I get to share one of their stories. Today, I’m excited to introduce Richard Borchers. 

Richard is a long-time member of the group and a committed writer. He always brings great stories to the table, including this one inspired by a prompt from Patricia McNair’s daily prompt list. 

. . . .

He was never good with the camera.

Graduation from high school was the occasion for getting his very own camera. Congratulatory gifts afforded him a moderately priced “Argus.” Somehow, he just knew it could produce very good slides and prints.

The first roll of film he purchased was returned to the drug store and exchanged for one proper for the camera. With help from a few more experienced “shutter bugs,” he mastered the trick of opening the lid and getting the precious capsule into the little box. He found “f-stop” but wondered, Where is the “f-go?”

The strange, new technology seemed almost beyond comprehension. He thought, If this little machine is going to be my friend, I guess I’d better read the manual.

After several months of shooting pictures, it still was no surprise when a roll of twenty frames would come back from the developer with three or four undeveloped. Did he leave the lens cover on? Was it a double exposure? Why were so many blank? It must be the drug store’s fault!

Sometimes, his camera was left sitting on the shelf, not really forgotten but more like just neglected. But when he was traveling or on vacation, the Argus was always with him. He found joy and satisfaction just to have a few pictures to share when he got home and memories to store away in albums. After some time, his photography skills improved a little bit. Still there were plenty of heads cut off, or legs, or arms, or that favorite uncle who had come a thousand miles just to have his picture taken. Too bad he was at the end of the row instead of in the middle.

However, he has this one incredible shot when everything came together just right.

The occasion was on the trip back from Seattle on the Amtrak. Attempts at taking scenery pictures from a moving train are not likely to be very good, he thought. But there was the camera, lying on the chair next to the bunk where he was sitting. It was primed with the toggle set for taking a panorama. It was beginning to get dark, and the train was speeding through Glacier National Park away from the sunset. Looking out the window over his shoulder, he grabbed the Argus and clicked the shuttle.

Putting it away for the night, he wished he were good with the camera.

. . . .

Over the shoulder and out the window: Glacier National Park
Photo by Richard Borchers

photo

“Happy accidents are real gifts….” ~ David Lynch

 

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Signed, Sealed, and Delivered: A Writing Prompt

We tell our stories in a myriad of ways–in print, over coffee, in our journals. But, there’s one venue for storytelling that is often overlooked, especially in this digital age where time and limited space might constrain our creativity: the letter.

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The old-fashioned letter provided a space for communion between friends. Upon receiving a letter, one would repair to a place of solitude to read it. to allow the essence of the distant friend to fill up the space. A letter cordoned off a sanctioned area of mind, too, and allowed the lucky recipient to spend a bit of deep time conjuring up the feel of being with a friend.
~ Lia Purpura, “On Miniatures” in The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction

Lucky recipient.
The feel of being with a friend.

Sounds like good reading, right?

Letters of Note is a website that recognizes the literary value in letters, posting “fascinating correspondence” from celebrities, politicians, everyday people. And more often than not, those letters tell a story. I love this recent post, “My Dear Son,” in which a father shares a bit of his own history as well as his experience in watching his son walk a similar path:

I think I had never realized before that I was getting old.

Of course I have known that my hair is causing your mother much solicitude. and that l am hopelessly wedded to my pince-nez while reading my daily paper, and at the opera; but in some incomprehensible way I had forgotten to associate these trifles with the encroachments of time. It was the sudden realization that you were about to become a Freshman in the college from which, as it seems to me, l but yesterday graduated, that “froze the genial current of my soul,” and spared you my paternal lecture.

Why, l can shut my eyes and still hear the Ivy Song, as we sang it that beautiful June morning; and yet but a few nights more and you will be locked in the deadly Rush on the same field where I triumphantly received two blackened eyes, and, l trust, gave many more!

Read the rest of the letter HERE (there’s so much more to absorb).

The Prompt

Think about the last time you received a letter. Consider what story you might tell on your own stationary. Or, even on that lined yellow paper. It doesn’t matter, the point is, tell your story. But, here’s the catch: write it in letter form. Then put it in an envelope and seal it.

Maybe you take it to your next critique group, open it, and read it there (after all, this is an essay as much as a letter). Maybe you put a stamp on it and send it right out. Whatever you decide, know that how you write the story adds to way in which it is received:

[T]he unsealing, the unfolding and smoothing out [of a letter], the squinting…the pausing, musing, smiling, the refolding and tucking back in–all of [this adds] to the physicality of reading. ~Lia Purpura

Who doesn’t love a letter?

* Photo credit: krosseel on Morguefile.com