Forging Friendships

I love my writer-life. I love getting to know people via email, where a wall-flower like me can shed the inhibitions of time and place, of physical appearance and insecurity, and just be words on a page.

The first time I experienced this was over five years ago when I took a couple of writing classes on-line through UCLA extension. One woman in the class and I began corresponding regularly even after our classes ended. In fact, she introduced me to Nanowrimo (National Novel Writers Month) during which I wrote the first draft of my first novel. And I helped her slice words from an essay which later won a national contest.

I’ve come to know other writers through conferences, then kept in touch and deepened our relationships via email. And just these past couple of weeks I’ve begun a correspondence with a writer on an email loop I subscribe to who emailed me off-list concerning a post I’d made. We’ve written a little back and forth since then.

And then there is the neat relationship I’ve forged with the daughter of a teacher at my kids’ school—where the mom found out I wrote and told me her daughter did, too. I asked for her email address and plunged in—just words on a screen careening into cyberspace rather than the scary voice-to-voice or face-to-face meeting with a stranger. That was the beginning of a fun friendship. We do hope to meet face to face one of these days, but for the moment, our words suffice.

My introverted world has expanded and I love the people who populate it. Who knew that God would use a computer and an internet connection to push me into forging friendships I would have shied away from in person.