My online life started at some point in the late 90s. This was long before Google was a thing—let alone a thing we used as a verb—when the closest we got to social media was a call-in radio program, and half of everyone accessed the internet through dial-up with AOL or CompuServe.
At first, it felt like exploring a new world. I used the Yahoo! home page for my search engine, though half the time I just hit links at random to see where they’d take me. Most of what I found were fan sites and posting boards and early blogs about cooking or writing or arts and crafts. People rarely used their real names, choosing posting names and avatars to represent themselves, and signing in with free email accounts created especially for online use. Because the internet was the wild west, and you never knew who you might meet. There could be stalkers or murderers floating around, after all. Best to keep your online life separate from Real Life.
I don’t know when I first heard the term IRL, but certainly it came up in relation to getting together with someone you’d previously only known online. It felt like a big deal, crossing that boundary, going from virtual anonymity to live-and-in-person. Making that shift acknowledged that not everyone was honest about who they were when they communicated online. You could be anyone on the internet; change your age, sex, career, looks, history…. Whatever. Meeting IRL—In Real Life—altered the playing field. Because in those days we all acknowledged that the internet wasn’t real and the usual rules didn’t apply. Once you met a person for lunch or coffee or to go to an event, that relationship took on a different set of rules, and you carried them back into your online interactions as well. Things started to crossover.
And of course the internet changed, too. Got bigger. Went commercial. Businesses got into the act. Online shopping happened. Reality went virtual. Information went viral. And so many of us began using the internet to make a living, whether through online courses or e-book sales or simply using it for marketing our skills and communicating with clients.
These days, hundreds of thousands of people spend their days online. The internet serves as the tool they connect through, that world wide web reaching out to make a wealth of careers possible from your desk at home. Especially in the wake of a global pandemic that forced more people into home offices than ever before. And I find myself wondering what IRL means now.
The dividing line used to be clear. The internet wasn’t real life. Real life happened in person. But that division faded away. You do your job online; you meet with clients over Zoom; half your computer programs are subscription-based and online; deliverables get uploaded to the Cloud; you get paid through Venmo or PayPal. Need groceries? Instacart. Takeout for dinner? GrubHub. Not sure of what a word means? Google it. Great new series you want to watch? Which streaming network is it on? Need to fix your leaking sink? There’s a YouTube video for that.
In Real Life, to me, used to delineate between the online and the physical, but I can’t make that distinction anymore without admitting most of my life takes place in a virtual space. And that life still feels real, if sometimes a bit bizarre.
What’s your perception of In Real Life in 2022? How often do you default to the internet to get things done, especially these days when gas costs are skyrocketing? Do we retire IRL in favor of some other term for finally meeting someone in person whom we’ve been engaging with for years over our computers? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Somehow it is June. I lost May in a sea of work and family drama and so much anxiety over the news. Every time I sat down to write something for this newsletter, the world exploded with a fresh distraction. You all know. We are all exhausted and enraged and just plain sad. But I will try to backtrack a bit, because there have been good things, as well.
It’s easy to forget, after two years of pandemic life, how much fun a big outdoor event can be. The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books returned to the USC campus at the end of April, and I, desperate for a live and in-person connection to book people, attended with great excitement. For those unfamiliar, this is a two-day event held every spring, featuring author panels on every imaginable subject, plus rows of booths where publishers and publishing-adjacent businesses and organizations get to sell their wares, and then tents housing book signings, poetry readings, story time, cooking demos, and so much more. There’s live music and swag for sale, food trucks, and just a general good time.
Needless to say, the festival did not take place live the past two years, though they made a good stab at taking the panels online. But it’s impossible to replicate the energy and enthusiasm in a virtual forum. Plus nothing makes me happier than seeing families attending, showing small children that there are people behind the stories they love and that books are for everyone.
LATFoB features a broad range of programing each year, fiction and nonfiction, from genre to literary, and something for all ages. I mostly attend writer-centric events, so it’s great to go to something focused on readers. That said, I did attend a great publishing panel, featuring Lisa Lucas, Roxane Gay, and David Treuer, with David L. Ulin moderating, titled Untold Stories: Building a Publishing Pipeline, where the discussion revolved around diversifying all levels of the publishing process so that not only are there diverse editors working with writers, but sales teams that include people who understand the works they’re selling and so on.
Other panels included Feminism and the Personal Essay, with Meghan Daum, Melissa Febos, and Maggie Nelson; a wonderful interview with Amor Towles, where he discussed The Lincoln Highway and shared a few Easter eggs for readers who have enjoyed his previous books as well (hint: pay attention to the dates when events take place over the course of his works); two wonderful romance panels focusing on newer writers in the genre including Casey McQuiston, Claire Kann, Elissa Sussman, and Ali Hazelwood, plus all-stars Jasmine Guillory and Christina Lauren (writing duo Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings).
While these all left me excited about publishing in general and adding way too many titles to my TBR, the panel that made me want to go home and write was Fiction: History Revisited, featuring Benjamin Labatut, Lee Kravetz, and Karen Joy Fowler. All writing strikes me as magical, but something about the alchemy of working history into a fictional story feels like a particularly intriguing puzzle, and listening to these authors discuss their recent work just drove that home.
Labatut, in particular, had some fascinating takes on fiction writing in general. A Chilean author with a background in journalism, he noted that he does not believe in nonfiction writing—in part because years of working in news rooms has taught him what happens between the gathering of facts and the writing of the news. And he did not mean this in a “fake news” sort of way, but simply as a straightforward acknowledgement that facts—actual facts—are true, but once you begin to impose narrative and point of view and other aspects of writing, the facts gain human perspective and interpretation and become something else. Fake news is bad storytelling, but all fiction is a dark art of sorts. And all of these authors were careful in their books to inhabit the POV of outside or peripheral characters rather than the famous individuals centered in their stories, acknowledging how difficult it is to claim to understand a historical person’s thoughts.
Fascinating stuff. And it was the one panel where I ended up purchasing all the authors’ books. Though a few crept in from other panels. And more are on the wish list. (I know, you’re shocked.)
More news of the virtual sort: I’m taking pitches and also teaching/sitting on panels for several of the Writing Day Workshops over the next few months. These are 100% online and also set in different time zones to allow people to join in from all over. I’m participating in the June (coming up the 10th and 11th), September, and November events, so check out the schedule.
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A few more links to share:
What Do We Lost—and Gain—as Book Tours Move Online? – Looking at how the pandemic changed book promotions and what that might mean in the future.
How Four Authors Organize and Declutter Their Massive Book Collections – I’ll admit I’m half in it for the pictures, but I do also love the inspiration. My apartment is on the verge of bursting from book build up, and I do need to declutter soon. Is it just me?
Mr. Malcolm’s List: Bridgerton Meets Pride and Prejudice in This Romantic First Look – I’m more than ready for this. There’s a trailer floating around, too. It looks both gorgeous and like a hoot.
Was George Eliot Wrong to Think Books Could Make People Better? – It’s an interesting question, and I think the true answer is it depends on the person. Regardless, a great read if you’re a Middlemarch fan.
N.K. Jemisin: Writing New Worlds – A terrific BBC interview focusing on writing broadly but also more specifically on world building.
11 Novels That Thwart Traditional Narrative Structure (to Brilliant Effect) – Some great thoughts as well as recommendations for anyone looking to change things up or experiment.
Newsmaker: Art Spiegelman; Maus creator discusses book banning and how libraries have been his salvation – Pretty much as written. Timely, as well as a love letter to libraries.
Currently in my teacup:
Toast & Jam tea by Yorkshire
Currently on my nightstand:
FOUR THOUSAND WEEKS: TIME MANAGEMENT FOR MORTALS by Oliver Burkeman
That’s all I have for now. Thank you for reading. Please do comment on anything that strikes your fancy. I love hearing what you think, what you’re reading, and how you’re all doing. Until next time.🥰
I.R.L: In Real Life
I’m enjoying this blog. I wrote a blog for ten years myself, blogging almost every day, which actually took up a lot of time. I joined a group of writers who had met on Freelance Success. We were all blog newbies and decided to read and promote each other’s blogs. The group was large at first, but whittled down to twelve women who lived in a variety of states and one foreign country. Over the ten years that we interacted online, I met four of them in person. The experience always turned out to be worthwhile. I find there’s a true affinity between writers. Rarely are we disappointed when we make the IRL connection.
Regarding books, thanks for the recommendations. I ordered The Last Confessions of Sylvia P from the library. The two novels I read most recently are Hamnet and Intimacies. As a writer, I worry about distractions, created by the modern world, that make the handling of time more of a challenge. There never seem to be enough hours in the day for everything I need to accomplish. I imagine others find themselves faced with the same dilemma. Often, unfortunately, novel reading loses out. I'm glad people are learning to appreciate audio books, which can be enjoyed in cars, for instance, or by older folks who suffer from eye strain.
I had hoped to approach 2022 IRL with a tad more gusto but I must admit I'm still a bit cautious. Not so much from the Virus anymore since I'm vaxxed and boosted and have already danced with the beast, but dammit, it's getting ugly out there.
As for online existence think some of the changes we've seen over the past couple of years have been good. Three of my four kids work remotely and love it. We're scattered over two countries, but hold virtual family game nights each month. Virtual conferences and workshops allow greater accessibility with no travel or hotel costs attached. (Granted some organizations do it better than others. Last year's Surrey conference was one of the best I've attended, and being able to watch all the workshops instead of having to choose which one in a given time slot was gold.)
That said, I'm really looking forward to a couple of in-person conferences this fall (and praying nothing comes along to necessitate going virtual again). I miss IRL interaction with my book-people tribe. Nothing can replace that. I do hope we'll keep some of the online perks going, though.