* * *

Me? A writer? Who'd a thunk it? Certainly not me. In last Tuesday's Netly News, I wrote of my renewed love of reading. That essay marks the beginning of a new dawn for me. I never wanted to be a writer before; in fact I hated writing assignments in school, I even dropped a communications class to avoid writing a report. Thinking about it now though; I was 19 and in Tech. school when I first used a computer, I didn't even have a computer in high school, much less a talking one. By the time I learned to use a computer I was too busy writing code to even think about writing anything else.

With all the reading I've been doing lately, my bookmark file was getting long, and difficult to manage. To make it easier to find regularly visited sites I decided to learn enough html to create a home page just for personal use. One thing led to another, adding to my page as I got ideas from other pages, and little by little, I started to really enjoy writing.

On Tuesday October the twenty second, I wrote the quote "I'm not a writer, but I play one on the internet" at the bottom of my page. That was when I decided to write a weekly article so as to force myself to write something, anything, just for discipline sake. I had no intention of advertising it, or submitting articles to other publications. It was the following day; Wednesday morning when I wrote that e-mail to Netly News about their text-only entrance. I then just finished the rest of my daily reading and went to bed, forgetting all about the letter I had written.

I had to be at work at 5:30pm, and I had just enough time to check my e-mail before leaving. Always happy to hear "You have new mail." in that familiar monotone voice, I quickly opened my mail and read the letter from Josh Quittner. I was stunned at first, then called Julie over to read it and she too was stunned. All I could think about all night at work was how, and what I would write when I got home. When I finally did get home I hammered out a 660 word rough draft in a couple of hours. Josh asked for 500 words so I was trying to keep it as concise as possible.

After finishing the draft I replied to Josh's e-mail message to inform him of my progress, and went to bed. Again, just as the day before, I checked my e-mail before going to work, and Josh had responded asking me to send him the rough draft, so he could review it and call me the next (Friday) morning. He called; we talked about what needed to be changed, and he then told me he'd be out the following Monday, and Tuesday, without saying why; I didn't ask. I found out Saturday when I read the Friday edition of the Netly News.

The following Wednesday, I e-mailed Josh again with the URLs of a straight text version, and an html version. All of this was happening very fast; I was more excited about this than I had been about anything in a very long time, and it would be 6 incredibly long days before I would hear from Josh again. Then, Tuesday the fifth of November, 1996 I checked my e-mail box to find the long awaited message from Josh, and sure enough, there it was ... published! It still seems very strange to me. I know that it is not really a big deal, but it's my proudest accomplishment in years, and has changed the focus of my life. Even my supervisor has commented on my much improved attitude.

So what now?

Now begins the challenge of writing of things less familiar; things other than those that I can ramble on endlessly about at the drop of a hat. And now is the time to begin Working on my writing skills; proper punctuation and such. I am to be paid for the article in Netly, and I am going to invest it in a Language Master. I had the chance to play with one for a couple of hours, and I believe that it will help a lot. I have been working up to 60 hours per week so can't see taking a class right now, but I hope to be able to get some writing courses in soon.

I do not want to focus on blindness related issues every week. Although much of my work is sure to reflect the fact that a visual impairment is a major factor in my life, it alone is not who or what I am. The topics of my articles will vary; thoughts for the week. I will just pick something that interests me early in the week, think about it while at work, and write it down when I get home. Saturday morning, I will search for any final links I want to add, and have it posted by noon.

I am very aware that my punctuation needs a lot of work, as does my sentence structure, and overall grammar. Any constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. I sincerely hope to look back over the course of a year, and see great improvement in both mechanics, and style. I also hope to show better organization and a more accurate interpretation of my thoughts into words. As far as content goes though, I also don't have a lot of time for research. I'll try to be as complete as possible, at least enough information to balance the story. I absolutely hated writing classes when I was in school; now I could really use those skills -- I guess Dad was right after all.