When I accept a “friend” request on Facebook, I tend to say either “Thanks for connecting,” or “Thanks for reaching out.” Both my sadly neglected Live Journal account and my only slightly neglected blog are titled “Reaching Out,” and so is my author topic on a smaller forum administered by a writer couple in New Zealand. I was reaching out for online connections well before there were such things as Live Journal or MySpace or Facebook, even so long ago that few if any editors and publishers would accept submissions by e-mail, so everything had to go through land mail, generally accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope if you wanted your manuscript returned, or a stamped, self-addressed post card if all you wanted back was a brief notice of acceptance or rejection. SSAE was the first writerly acronym I ever learned.
My first e-mail account wasn’t actually mine, but belonged to one of my sons, supplied by the university he attended. My first online group experience was on Genie, a site run by General Electric with “rooms” for shared-interest groups, in my case one occupied by readers and writers of science fiction and fantasy. It was intoxicating to be able to follow conversations between writers I admired and others I came to admire, and to even put in a comment of my own from time to time. Still more exciting was being able to post news of my own first few story acceptances, mostly to very new, very small presses, but one to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, which was, in those times, very well-known. (Her rather acerbic rejection letters were legendary, and folks would compare them for fun, but I never got an unkind word from her.) GE dropped that service after a few years, but two other such forums run by science fiction writers sprang up, and one still exists, though a shadow of its former self. These days the SFWA web site (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) theoretically fills that function, but we crotchety old folk miss the informal collegiality of the old forums, and even the frequent flame wars.
Speaking of old folk, I once read an article saying that in the early days of the Internet, women in their fifties were among the most avid new users, and I believe it. Women have usually been the ones responsible for keeping up with family and social connections, but there’s more to it than that. Women of a certain age, especially those finally getting some respite from the energy-consuming aspects of raising a family, can be desperate to expand their horizons, take part in the discourses of a wider world, and find a place among others who share their interests. Even, often, to find new close friends.
I certainly felt that way. I wasn’t exactly isolated before that, living and working in a college town, even keeping up with the genre I hoped to write in through books and magazines and printed newsletters and frequent Science Fiction/Fantasy conventions—my kids were big SF/F fans, too. But to be able to reach out to people across the world! To converse in not-quite-real-time, with a brief chance to edit your comments before clicking on send! (I’ve never been all that comfortable with phone conversations, though I certainly did my share of tying up the phone line—they were all land lines—as an adolescent.)
And then, when I began to write erotica, I discovered the delights of online pseudonymity, even though I never made much effort to conceal my everyday identity. Writing erotica, especially lesbian erotica, also connected me with more like-minded people than I could ever have met otherwise. Quite a few of those fellow writers have become close friends, even those I’ve never met ITF (In the Flesh, in case you’ve missed that particular acronym.) A few that I’ve met (very much ITF) have even introduced me to worlds like BDSM that I don’t fit into entirely well, but the experience has been invaluable as research.
But there’s more to reaching out, yearning to connect, than I can explain even to myself. It’s not a matter of anything lacking in “real life,” just a sense of how much more there is in the world. Most of my online contacts these days are with people who are also writers, especially those who hope to write for my anthologies, and a much smaller group of readers who like my work, but we discuss and compare and rant and joke about an endless variety of subjects in and outside of our own lives. I have friends in Australia, New Zealand, Great Britain, Canada, Germany, Portugal, who feel closer than the neighbors on my (admittedly thinly settled) street. On public forums like Facebook I’m usually pretty careful not to get too personal in what I say about my family and myself, but when I really need to share my emotions—like when my granddaughter was born, or when my mother died—the outpouring of support warms something that might even be my soul. I support others in the same way when I can, and sometimes in other ways, when people I respect and value are having rough times.
Here at OGG, I find myself stretching beyond the limits I usually set for myself on public forums. I don’t quite know why, except that our topics tend to lead me in that direction, and I feel close to all of you who regularly post here. I know others read here, but unless they comment, they’re largely anonymous, so maybe I don’t think so much about what I should or shouldn’t say in front of them. Which isn’t to say that I don’t still have my areas of privacy, even minor secrecy, but this is a place where I reach out for connection more openly than anywhere else online, and I thank you all for being here for me.
Sacchi:
ReplyDeleteI did a lot of e-mail before Facebook. I was never one to write letters but it was a nice way to have a measured conversation. I always hated the delay with snail mail. I liked Facebook at first, in my real life it was once a useful tool for tracking down long lost friends and relatives. I have a Facebook account for my penname, Spencer Dryden, where I have more "friends" than in real life but they are all writers trying to get me to read their book. Every so often though I do find myself full of wonder at the fact that you can exchange messages in real time with folks who live half way around the world from you. I wonder where it will lead.
Thanks for sharing your life with us.
I don't like talking on the phone at all anymore. it jump when my phone rings, its always someone who wants something from me. Lately though I have used FaceTime to talk to my two sisters, that's much better experience.
Spencer, I have Caller ID on my landline phone, so I can tell whether the caller is someone I know and/or might want to hear from. 99% of the time they aren't. Most of my actual phone conversations involve my father, who is very deaf, so there's some stress there, but at least if he's on the phone I know he's pretty much okay. We can manage to converse a bit, but he can't decipher messages on his answering machine except to recognize voices of family members, so he can call us back when he hasn't heard the phone ring the first time. Every time the phone rings, though, i worry that he might be calling with an emergency, or a hospital might be calling, or a friend of his who's been known to drive him to the hospital. He;s doing well right now, though, as long as we get to him soon after these endless snowstorms to dig him out. The guy who plows his very long driveway does a terrible job.
DeleteI get annoyed when people don't immediately reply to an email or a message I've left on voicemail. The days of waiting for a reply to an actual letter are long gone - I no longer use snail mail for any communication apart maybe at birthdays, but even then I use the electronic cards more times than not. I guess it's called impatience, something my hubby readily accuses me of.
ReplyDeleteJP, I still have elderly family members who can be contacted only by snail mail, being too deaf for phones and too set in their ways to learn about computers, so I still use it for them. There's a nostalgic thrill to getting personal letters in the mailbox. On the other hand, I have one relative just as old as the others and just as deaf who has eagerly embraced e-mail, as long as we type in capital letters and he can enlarge the font to see them. I guess the genes for such long lives are a good thing, although I dread the gradual loss of visual and auditory acuity. Not to mention forgetting random words like acuity, which I do even now.
DeleteI didn't find a social media group I related to until joining ERWA, then from there to here. I had a website for my gallery, (because somebody told me I HAD to) but you could count the number of things I sold because of it on two hands. Facebook was too silly to even continue with. Sapped too much time.
ReplyDeleteI can count on two hands the number people in meat space who know I'm Lisabet Sarai. My situation forces me to remain anonymous, so these connections with fellow writers in cyberspace are all the more precious.
ReplyDeleteSacchi, I love your account of your early days connecting via the Internet. Obviously you had better Internet in your little town than we had in ours. When I left the Valley a few years into the twenty first century, we still had 36KB dialup! In fact, the neigbors with whom I am still in touch tell me there's still no broadband!
Wow, you really were an early adopter! There is something magical about the Grip. I'm not quite sure what it is, but it makes me open up much more than usual as well.
ReplyDeleteSacchi, we're glad you share your thoughts with us here. :)
ReplyDelete