Becca Rowan is a writer and the author of Life in General, a collection of essays about mid-life as experienced by an American woman in the 21st century. Becca loves creating connections by sharing stories on her popular blog.
Here he is, our long awaited arrival, a perfectly perfect little boy.
He gave his mom a little bit of a hard time, and put a crimp in his parents carefully thought out birth plan.
BUT
~he is here and healthy, and beautiful in every way.
Life is good.
Whether you've noticed it or not, the blogs have recently been on a rather tight schedule. For the past few months, I've been posting here at the Byline on Monday-Wednesday-Friday, at Bookstack on Tuesday-Thursday-Sunday, and Write on Wednesday on -well, Wednesday, of course. I've also managed to post several reviews and/or columns at All Things Girl, and have at least two more in the can for later this month. It's worked out quite well, and I'm pleased and proud of sticking to my self-imposed deadlines.
However, there is a definite possibility that intermittent interruptions could soon occur in the blogging schedule.
Later this afternoon I'm flying to Dallas for about a month, during which time my grandson is due to make his appearance. Thus, I suspect that blogging will take a definite backseat to baby tending.
Which is, of course, as it should be.
In the past several months, I have been continually overwhelmed by the love and support and general feeling of happy anticipation surrounding this baby's birth. There has been so much joy amongst all my friends that I feel as if my grandson is already wrapped in dozens of nurturing and loving arms. It has been a surprising and humbling feeling, to have so many people care so much about my little family and our newest member.
I am so very grateful.
I will keep you all posted with regard to baby Connor's arrival and the ensuing excitement. There will be much to say, but perhaps very little time to say it. In the meantime, thank you for your love and support and caring.
I can't wait for Connor to meet you all someday.
A new blogger, whose posts I've come to enjoy, wrote yesterday of her realization that blogging does not provide the meaningful interactions with people she was hoping to find when she began a few months ago. She is someone who needs to have personal conversations face to face, she says, noting that she felt the need to "sit down over a cup of coffee" and really talk to the people who were reading her words and leaving comments on her posts.
I certainly respect that, though I will her miss her quirky and often poignant take on motherhood and marriage and the stuff of life. After reading her farewell post this morning, I started thinking about some of the other blogging friends who have passed through my life for a few months, maybe even years, at a time. People with whom I'd developed a "relationship" via the written word, people whom I considered friends, although just not the kind you can meet at the neighborhood java joint for a cup of coffee.
Are those relationships really less real because they aren't conducted face to face? It's true that being unable to talk in person also means being unable to "be there" for someone in all the physical ways we consider important in true friendship. You can't take homemade soup to her house when she's sick, pick up her kids from school when she gets stuck at work, be a buffer between she and her mother in law at her annual holiday open house.
A few weeks ago I re-connected with a friend I hadn't spoken with in over 20 years. Our children attended grade school together for about three years, and we became friends while working together on various school related projects. I was delighted that we found our way back to each other (via Facebook, of course, the great social data base.) When I walked into the restaurant where we had arranged to meet, I recognized her immediately, and my mind was flooded with memories of staying late at the school, putting up display boards, creating newsletters and mailings, going out for coffee after drop-offs in the morning. I had a huge cache of physical memories to call upon, memories that added great meaning to our reunion two decades later.
So I wondered - would I be able to have the same meaningful reunion with bloggers whom I had interacted with for that period of time? Truthfully, probably not. The depth of our connection wasn't that great.
That isn't to say that a deep personal connection can't be formed through written communication. But you must be a person who is extremely comfortable expressing themselves through the written word. My son and daughter in law conducted their entire courtship via e-mail. This was almost 15 years ago, before Skype, and video cameras, and - yes!- even before Facebook. They grew to know and love each other through pages and pages of voluminous e-mails.
Obviously, the friendships we form in casual online connections aren't that developed or that strong. I do think most times it takes a personal connection to create the kind of lasting bonds that characterize true friendship. I have met a few bloggers in person, and there are others I long to meet as well, people who, when I read their posts, I would love to sit down and share coffee with them, go for a walk by the river with them, settle into their front porch swing with a glass of wine. So I understand what Shelva meant yesterday about needing the deeper connection that personal interaction brings.
Still, I enjoy the connection I have with my blogging friends. It's not completely real in every sense of the word, but there is a real sense of caring, encouragement, and support which is clearly communicated in each comment, blog post, or follow up e-mail.
That makes it real enough to matter to me.
How about you? Do you feel the need to make it real with your blogging friends? Or are you happy with the tangential online connection?
The handbell group I rang with prided themselves on an unusually expressive musical style which they called "ringing in color." It was a term that came to identify their performances to such an extent that they legally trademarked it. When asked about it, our director was happy to explain what the term meant to us. "We want our playing to take the black and white notes off the page and bring them into full color," she would say. This was achieved by careful attention to dynamics, phrasing, melodic and harmonic lines, and overall visual presentation, so the group was "as much fun to watch as it was to hear."
I'm well acquainted with the musical practice of analyzing each line of music, looking for the climax of the phrase, searching out the melody notes which might be hidden amongst the inner voices and the leading tones in chords. I know how to emphasize notes in order to make the music more meaningful as well as more pleasurable to the listener. It's a painstaking task, looking at a piece of music line by line, analyzing, dissecting, listening and learning to feel the best possible interpretation.
I never thought about applying this process to writing until this morning.
Beth Kephart, is one of my favorite writers and blogging friends, an author well-known for extraordinarily lyrical and descriptive writing style, the very embodiment of the "writing in color" idea. Beth is hosting a sentence challenge for NaNoWriMo participants. She is seeking "a single sentence as it was first written in the heat of a NaNo moment, and that same sentence after it has been reconsidered, revised."
As examples, she shows us "before and after" versions of sentences from her own work in progress. The first example is perfectly functional, grammatically correct, and clearly conveys its meaning. But the revised sentence reads as smoothly as warm dark chocolate, leaving a satisfying aftertaste in the readers brain. The first sentence is a clearly black and white while the second jumps off the page in living color.
Beth has said she can spend hours, days in fact, getting one sentence just right. "I care perhaps too much about language," she writes in a blog post. " I want to take risks with it, yearn to push it. (...) because I think we have a responsibility as writers not just to tell stories, but to try to tell stories artfully, with originality and daring."
I never fully understood the possibility of such an undertaking, but I'm beginning to. Crafting colorful sentences requires the skillful combination of vocabulary and grammar but also that unexplainable "X" factor which allows you to recognize when the words appear in living color. Like any skill, it takes practice and committment plus careful and thoughtful study, particularly study of other writers who are successful with this concept.
Each writers voice brings a unique style to their sentences, just as a musicians touch does to their instrument. Beyond basic good writing skills the best writers will take an extra step to compose sentences which transcend black and white ink on the page and develop into vivid colors in the reader's mind.
That's really writing in color.
The beauty of community theatre is that it is the people's theatre. It is your friends and neighbors sharing a passion. - Ruth Legg, Geneva, NY, American Association of Community Theater
Even though I don't act, or do stagecraft, I love theater. I wonder sometimes if there might be an actress hidden deep inside me, underneath the shy person who always chooses to remain quietly on the sidelines. I love the dimensional effect of people being right in front of me, real and alive, but not being necessarily themselves. I love watching them interact with other people who are also not being necessarily themselves. I love the "otherness" of theater, that I can be sitting in a room but also be on the coast of Maine or in the south of France or a New York city hotel room. I love the way a director's imagination can entirely change the way we perceive a character.
One of my dearest friends has, in her "retirement," begun a community theater program here in our town. I've been helping her, doing my usual sideline thing - a little marketing, a little shopping, even a little accompanying. The first production, a musical review, goes up next weekend, so rehearsals are intensifying as the show comes down to the wire.
I spent yesterday's extra-long daylight savings Sunday afternoon in the church basement where the production will take place. The cast was having a good time, still making some blunders, but nothing fatal. Sitting on the sidelines affords me an opportunity to watch the interactions between cast members and crew, and this particular group really impresses me. There are 14 in the cast, ranging in age from 25-65. Several of them are alumni of the high school choral program where my friend (the Director) once taught. Some are members of her church choir. A few are right off the street, urged by friends to audition. Some have acted a lot, even professionally. Some have never acted at all, but are eager and willing to learn. Each of them comes with their own life in the everyday world, their own problems and dilemmas of day to day living, which must be left at the door when rehearsal begins. They are our "friends and neighbors, coming together to share a passion." And they have come together without a hitch, and are supportive and kind and encouraging. That is a testament to them as people, and also to my friend, their director, who has a great knack for bringing people together and helping them work as a community.
It will be, I think, a good show and an emotionally satisfying experience for everyone. I know I'll be proud to sit in the audience and cheer them along. They've come together to make something beautiful and meaningful - a worthwhile community effort, building community feeling and excitement.
Community theater.
I wish you could all be there to feel it too.
How about you? Have you ever participated in community theater or some other community building effort? How has it affected your life?
