The Silken Tent (This is the first of a series of pieces chronicling my participation in JournalCon. As noted below, I don't like to get "meta," but as someone at the event said, "it ain't meta if you were actually there." For the benefit of readers who don't frequent the discussion groups of the online journal world, I'll try to keep the brakes on name dropping. But understand that if People magazine covered OLJs, many of these people would be in the "star tracks" pages.)
My Letter to the World
October 2000
October 6, 2000
Friday
I almost never use this space for what's called "meta entries." Those are journal pieces that talk about the on-line world where these essays have their home, the community of readers and writers that has sprung up around the "phenomenon" (as it's called) of on-line journalling. In fact, I prefer to operate under the polite fiction that this is not a "diary," that these "pieces" (I never call them "entries") are a series of personal essays such as those written by Annie Dillard or Anna Quindlen, and that they are published in my own magazine, The Silken Tent.
Nevertheless, I am part of an online community. I had my first "home page" in 1997, when searching for material about some author led me to personal and classroom pages. I learned rudimentary HTML -- enough to correct the most glaring problems in the "E-Z page builder" templates found at free hosting sites. I posted a few "slice of life" observational pieces I'd written, and then let the project die in the paroxysm of my last year of teaching and my decision to retire and write seriously.
In February of 1999 I was still trying to find my groove, develop a discipline of writing and looking for ways I could garner useful feedback. An internet search for writing discussion led me somehow to the famous Diary-L, a free-wheeling discussion list frequented mostly by people who, in one form or another, keep and post on-line a diary or journal. I resurrected my "home page," now properly called a "site," began contributing to the list discussions, learned a little more HTML, bought my own domain name, and became a full-fledged member of the community.
Sometime last year people began talking about having an official gathering of veteran journallers and others interested in what we now perceive as a new genre. People were willing to do the grunt work of organizing and mounting such a convention (called a "Con" in the argot of fans of science fiction, anime, and games), a site was chosen, a program developed, and JournalCon 2000 was born.
There was never a question that I would attend. Pittsburgh is only 250 miles west of where I live. I have a certain history with the place, and an old friend living there who shares that history. I marked my calendar and sent in my money.
And then I was invited to speak.
In an hour or so I am leaving. And I am scared (and I use this word advisedly!!) shitless.
I'm worried that I won't have anything of value to say.
I'm worried that the popular kids won't like me.
I'm worried that I'll be older and slower and more conservative and way more academic than all the hip, cutting edge tech types whose journals I read and whose strong and well articulated voices drive this community.
The event runs from today through Sunday. I'm staying in Pittsburgh until Tuesday to visit my friend and to tour a 19th century cemetery.
I'll let you know how it goes.
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Letters 2000
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