Introductions aren't easy, and they're often nerve-wracking, at least for me.  It's especially hairy when I know that I'm about to introduce a group of people to a show in media res, which is essentially what I have to do when starting a new blog.  My blogs have always been little vignettes of my life, replete with specially named characters, scenes and locales.   My kids are Things One, Two and Three, friends become "Friend One," and "Friend Two," or, inexplicably, "Fort Awesome."   Sometimes I meet someone and I feel the need to rechristen him "Skim Milk PhD."  All of this goes a ways in explaining that new readers probably feel a litle lost, a little confused, when I'm chattering on about Friend R, for example,and the Overpriced Daycare Center. 

Other people write about politics or knitting.  I, in the meantime,  write strange narratives about people, myself included, and my life.  It's like poetry, but without all the overwrought metaphors. 

Okay, sometimes those, too. 

So, I thought, perhaps I'd borrow from the Odyssey or Cantar de Mio Cid and bring you up to speed, so to speak, with my blog, and with the establishment of blogging in the literary world by posting a conversation I had with Friend Omega about blogging and writing. 

Also, because it's funny: 

Friend Omega: Do you know what I hate? I hate when you ask someone what kind of movie they like and they say “Independent film.” That’s not a freaking genre, people. It’s not a type of movie. It only indicates the source of funding. It is the same as saying to me, “My favorite type of film is anything funded by foreign Letter of Interest capital.”

Terrible Mother: Yes, but, in the defense of those people, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to answer such questions. Take writing for example. Someone will ask me “soo…what do you write?” And I almost never know what to say. And no matter what I answer with, they say “no, I mean, like, science fiction or romance or something like that.”

Friend Omega: Do you answer, “I write independent short narrative non-fiction”?

Terrible Mother: Um…no. It’s like what happens if I say “I write literature.” I sound like a jackass.

Friend Omega: But you write narrative non-fiction.

Terrible Mother: But I also write a lot of fiction. Like what am I supposed to say? “I write dramatic literature?” I SOUND LIKE A JACKASS!

Friend Omega: So sound like a jackass.

Terrible Mother: I hate sounding like a jackass. I want to sound like a cool and not so geeky non-jackass. [pause] And I don’t want to say “I write a pretty cool blog.”

Friend Omega: So tell them “I write short, narrative non-fiction.” [pause] You know what you should say? You should say “I write English.” It’s the equivalent of “independent film.”

Terrible Mother: You know what? I am so going to say that from now on. It covers everything. It covers the blog and anything else I might write. Ever. ‘Cause it’s not likely I’m gonna start writing in Russian or something.

Friend Omega: No, no. You can’t because this will go like this:

“Oh you’re a writer? What do you write?”

“English”

“No, I mean like science fiction, or fantasy, that sort of thing.”

“Oh, no. I write for grown-ups.”

*tm