Old News is Good News

I'm going to a reunion tomorrow of some people at my college alma mater who worked with me on the student newspaper. It's actually a publications reunion of those who were involved in the newspaper, yearbook, and magazine. I'm excited but nervous, of course. I won't say how many years it's been, but I'm sure I won't be able to recognize some people and vice versa. What will be most interesting are not the changes in the faces, though, but what people have done with their lives. Most of my fellow editors were journalism majors, but some were not. I was an English major and then went on to library school. Although I did find a job in my chosen career and have been working at a public library for many years, I have also been able to fulfill my interest in writing in a variety of ways, most recently self publishing my romance novel, "Cloudy Rainbow."

When I first found out about the reunion and considered attending, I wondered who would be there and what everyone was doing now. I prepared a short speech in my head to reintroduce myself to the group. One thing worried me. Should I stick to talking about my library job, as mundane yet traditional as it is, or should I reveal my writing endeavors in a virtual world? For the past two years, I've been writing for a newspaper that covers Second Life news, making $4 a story which is even lower than most starving journalists make. In addition, this past year, I've been volunteering as the Associate Editor of a Second Life library magazine called RezLibris. All this is done in my spare time, of which I don't have a lot with a 4-year daughter at home. But I do it for the same reason I joined the student newspaper all those years ago -- for the experience, the fun, and the challenge.

Would my old colleagues, no pun intended, find it interesting or strange that I have become involved in virtual writing? And would they consider my self-published book, also featuring a virtual world, a literary achievement or a waste of paper (since it's POD, that may not be such a factor). I'd love their feedback, their reactions, especially since one part of the book is taken from my recollected experiences on the student paper. There was no Internet back then, no social networking, no 3-D worlds like Second Life. But there was still the need for communication, the need for news that could be provided and reported whether to a local community, a college campus, or the world. That need remains, although the media has changed in many ways.

So as I prepare to share my own personal news, I decide that my virtual writing just may interest some of the college publications gang and my book is a tribute to them as much as it is to the cat who I wrote it in memory of. For what I learned and what I gained from my experience with them surely shaped what I am today and the writing that I do.