Bloggy Stuff

Sometimes I feel like blogging is to the early 21st century as CB radio operators were to the 1970's -- I remember going on trips with my family (to exciting places like the Poconos) and we would look in the cars to see who had a CB radio. They were a way of communicating that was pretty much alien to us. "What could they be talking to each other about?" was the common catch phrase. CBers were highly identifiable nerds.

I'm pretty sure a lot of folks feel that way about bloggers. When my kids text, and text they do, friends who are not around teens constantly say: "Why are they texting so much? What could they be saying?" I think the common refrain here is: If I don't participate in it, how could anything that's transpiring there be important?

So the "organized mothers" talked about blogging the other day. This is my label for the women who are never late to anything, who have their Christmas cards out the day after Thanksgiving, and who can always locate all the papers necessary for the school trip the night before the school trip, and don't use the morning as an exercise in human stress capacity. I often say to my kids, "Hurry up, we'll be late and then I'll have to walk past all the organized mothers." This usually spurs them into action because I can't stand dealing with this group.

So the other day,at the spring concert, my daughter, a member of the fifth grade chorus, was hiding in the violin room because the chorus songs were "way, way too dorky to sing" -- I had to stand lookout for any stray school administrators while the fifth grade chorus sang without her. She didn't mind playing her violin in front of the school; it was the dorkiness of the songs that prompted her vanishing act.

It adds a new dimension to parenting when you are standing in front of a cluster of music stands stage whispering, "Emma, really, we'll get ice cream. McDonalds. Really. Just come out of there." To which she replied, "I'd rather be dead than sing those dorky songs."

Of course, while I was standing guard until the violins went on, a group of organized mothers were gathering (in an early and poised manner) right outside the violin room, right there alongside of me. They were talking about the Internet, and how the PTA needed a website.

They went from website chat to blogs, and they talked about how dumb blogs are, whose sister-in-law kept one, and how they are meaningless clutter on the Internet (my paraphrasing).

I like blogs. And it's not just because I have a semi-justifiable way of avoiding my real writing work by blog cruising. I like seeing what other writers are reading, what they are working on, and what they are thinking about books. I don't have the kind of life where I can call people very often; I don't have long periods of sustained time for conversation. And when I do, I have to use it to work. So blogs keep me connected with other folks, and mostly writing folks. I don't think I read any blogs of people who don't write. I am now a highly identifiable writing nerd connecting with other highly identifiable writing nerds.

All of this is a long way of saying that Flux, who is my publisher, has some great stuff going on over at its blog. It's got author interviews and streaming podcasts, and book giveaways -- I like to think if the organized mothers created a YA blog, it would be something comprehensive and appealing like this. Those organized moms are probably all right; they just don't speak my particular language.