Your name in print

I want to start doing some more writing for writing's sake over here on Spellbound Jungle Blog 1.0. So, here goes.

Sometime this summer Truman pulled out all my old high school and college newspapers from their accordion folder tomes and started scattering pieces around the basement. I stopped him, laughed at some of the inserts, then put them back away.

I thought about why I was keeping these relics that are quickly gaining this old newspaper smell. Not the good kind that comes after 20 years of yellowing and dog eared pages, but a the smell of trapped ink that hasn't off-gassed.

It's because I remember how much they meant to me once. And I remember that thrill of seeing my name in print for the first time on a story about the La Jolla High School band that trying entirely too hard to make the band sound cooler than it was because I wanted a story that sounded good.

I was doing more with words than with story, then.

In college the paper was a labor of love. I remember once sitting next to a student who was reading my work. I felt like a time traveler stumbling upon herself in danger of creating a paradox that would rip a whole in the very fabric of space and time — because, for me at least, the time period in which I wrote something, and everything that went into that, is part of the final product.

When I read the words I remember it all.

The reader, though, just sees the text before him.

Feeling dangerous and sneaky, I asked the guy what he was reading about and if he liked it. He was reading my article and he did.

Elation. I don't write to be liked, necessarily, but I do write to be read. Knowing someone was reading what I was writing gave so much more meaning to the process.

That same year I got my first check for writing from a little alternative weekly in San Diego I freelanced for. My name in that print — that check ink — was amazing to see. I felt legitimate, that this wasn't just a hobby, but something I could do for a living.

I still a photocopy of that check scanned into my computer. I've held onto it because it reminds me of how proud I felt to be making even a tiny sum off of the written word.

Last year there was get-together for USD Alumni in Minneapolis and I talked to someone who was at the school around the same time I was. I asked about the paper before revealing who I was and he said he remembered it turning around when I was editor-in-chief.

Writing is often a thankless job. It's rare to get comments and when you do they are often angry, especially when it comes to newspapers. Hearing that the work I did — the late nights and general hard-ass stance I had to take — actually made a difference in someone else's mind was like getting that first pay check all over again.

Now I write online for myself, for my photography business, for my son and freelancing for MPR. Somehow in some weird way online publishing isn't as exciting as print.

Maybe it's because I don't expect to stumble upon someone in the real world reading a blog. But with smart phones and e-readers all around, I probably should.

There are many elements I love about writing on the web, but that doesn't make me miss seeing my name in print any less.