I recently had the opportunity to write an author profile for the site Literary Mama. This was an interesting experience for several reasons. First, I had never written a profile like this before. I have done interviews for radio, but not written. It was interesting going through…
Rhonda Havig
I tried writing in a journal a few times when I was younger, but it seemed like someone would always manage to read it. Each time someone else read one of my journals, it felt like an incredible violation of privacy. It also usually resulted in that person being mad at me for what I had written, which didn’t help. So I stopped writing down my thoughts and feelings and just kept them to myself. 
Then along comes this internet thing and along with it social media and blogs. Now journals aren’t just little books with cute, easy to pick locks on them. They are 1’s and 0’s out in the open for the whole world to read.
The whole flippin’ world.
The thought of it was and still is horrifying to me. But I put on my big girl panties and dutifully signed up for social media accounts and even posted a comment now and then.
Several years have passed since joining the cyberspace society and so far I haven’t completely pissed off anyone with anything I have posted online. At least not that I know of. Yet. I got brave about a year ago and started a blog. It was a big deal for me to do this, but I wasn’t writing anything terribly personal. Just talking about stuff I made and having fun with it. Still haven’t completely pissed off anyone that I know of.
Then I recently decided to make a go of this whole being an author/writer thing, and started this blog. I also set up a Twitter account dedicated to it. It has been interesting “meeting” new people via Twitter and seeing what others are sharing. I see all of these people tweeting back and forth and I find I’m still mostly standing on the sidelines. Still the shy girl who is afraid to write anything that someone else might read. (I have already thought about just deleting this post and not publishing it because this is the most personal thing I have ever written online.)
At all.
And I recently realized it shows in my writing. But not in a good way.
I have been going through the story I wrote for NaNoWriMo last year and noticed a couple of the characters getting along way too well in parts of the story where one of them should have been super pissed off at the other. It nagged at the back of my head a little bit when I was writing it, but I didn’t fully see it until reading through the whole story again. (This is why we edit, right?)
This also struck me as a bit funny because one of my favorite writing moments from last year involved the first big argument between these same characters. I was happily typing along letting the story unfold as my fingers hit the keys when I thought, “These people have been getting along really well. Almost too well.” And within a few sentences one of the characters started a rant with “Oh, f**k off!” I paused for a second and thought, “Okay. I guess they are going to fight now.” I think I actually giggled because it was such a cool feeling to have the story just flowing onto the screen like that. Then I quickly went back into the rant and finished the scene.
Hi! My name is Rhonda Havig and I am a wife, mother, and writer. I have a BA in Communication from Stephen F. Austin State University (Go Jacks!) and I took so many English classes as electives that ended up with a second minor. Why so many…