MY TAPESTRY OF INTERNET WRITING

There are now several hundred thousand readers, if not several million, engaged in parts of my internet tapestry, my literary product, my creation, my immense pile of words across the internet--and hundreds of people with whom I correspond on occasion and as infrequently as possible as a result. If I went “hell-for-leather,” as they say, with all the people who write to me I would do nothing else but correspond and there is much else to do in life than write letters to 100s of people. I can understand now, in the evening of my life, what the phrase “overburdened pen” could mean if I let it--and so I keep correspondence to a minimum in order to do writing tasks and activities with (a) lots of personal, social and professional mileage on the one hand and (b) as much joy as I can suck from the literary activity on the other.

This amazing technical facility, the world wide web, has made this literary success and international activity possible. If my writing had been left in the hands of the traditional hard and soft-cover publishers, where it had been without success, languishing in files in my study, when I was employed full time as a teacher, lecturer, adult educator and casual/volunteer teacher from 1981 to 2001, these results would never have been achieved. When one writes one likes to have readers; it’s a little like talking and having listeners. Talking to oneself and writing in a vacuum are somewhat pointless exercises, although they do have a place sometimes especially as I have entered into these middle years(65-75) of late adulthood, as the human development psychologists call the years from 60 to 80 in the lifespan. I enjoy the pleasures of solitude; indeed writing is not something that takes place in a crowd, surrounded by people whether they be family, friends or associations of whatever kind. Talking to oneself I find, though, has its own special pleasures and delights, especially as an accompaniment to the literary activities that are part of my solitude.

I have been asked how I have come to have so many readers at my website and more so on my tapestry of writing which was created across the internet in the first decade of this third millennium, the years 2001 to 2010. Let me briefly describe the process of developing this tapestry of writing, a tapestry which for many thousands of of internet writers now is just another form of ‘published’ writing in addition to the traditional forms of publishing. Perhaps the metaphor for the product, the result, of all my internet writing would be jig-saw puzzle rather than tapestry. If a publisher were to attempt to put all of my internet writing into a book or a set of books, the exercise would take him or her months and the product would be an irregular bundle of pieces that would require great skill in order to fit the puzzle together into some smooth and meaningful whole.

The literally hundreds of thousands of readers I have---and as I say perhaps millions because it is very difficult to assess a quantitative readership when it becomes as extensive as mine has become---at locations on my tapestry, my jig-saw puzzle of prose and poetry, are found at over 4000 websites where I have registered: forums, message boards, discussion sites, blogs, locations for debate and the exchange of views on more subjects than I or others could shake a stick at. They are sites in cyberspace where I place: essays, articles, books, ebooks, poems, posts-in-dialogue or apologetics as some might call the more vigorous intellectual and often heated exchanges are called and other genres of writing.

I have registered at this multitude of sites, placed my literary products there and engaged in discussions with literally thousands of people, little by little and day by day. I try to keep these exchanges to a minimum or they would come to occupy all my time and there is a life outside cyberspace. I enjoy these results, though, without ever having to deal with publishers as I had done for the two decades without any success before the new millennium opened and before this success emerged on the world-wide-web. This tapestry I have sewn in a loose-fitting warp and weft across the internet; indeed, it is so loose the garment would probably be too big even for the great Hulk of sci-fi fame.

The last ten years(2001-2010) of internet posting have been immensely rewarding. As I say above, when one talks one likes to be listened to and when one writes one likes to have readers. It is almost impossible, though, to carry literary torches as I do through internet crowds or in the traditional hard and soft-cover forms, without running into some difficulties. My postings singe the beards of some readers and my own occasionally. Such are the perils of dialogue, of apologetics, of writing, of posting, indeed, I might add, of living. Much of writing and dialogue in any field of thought derives from the experience each of us has of: (a) an intimate or not-so-intimate sharing of views in some serendipitous fashion or (b) what seems like a fundamental harmony or dissonance between what each of us thinks and what some other person thinks. In some ways, the bridge of dialogue is immensely satisfying; in other ways the gulfs over the valleys of life are unbridgeable. When the latter is the case and when a site is troubled by my posts, I usually bow out for I have not come to a site to engage in conflict, to espouse an aggressive proselytism but, rather, to stimulate thought and, as I say, share views. And so, for now, I remain yours sincerely and I look forward to hearing from you should you desire to write.-Ron Price, George Town, Tasmania, Australia.