It seems that I should have had one of these things up and running long ago. For the last five years, Facebook has served as an adequate forum to post opinion pieces, short fiction, poetry, and reviews of music. And it's been a lot of fun; I can come and go from it as I please, I know who my readers are (not random strangers, but people from my past or present that I like and respect), and I can interact with my friends frequently and easily. Blogs sound so professional, almost impenetrable to the novice writer, or at least the writer who feels they have a lot to say but either little time to accomplish anything or an almost crippling phobia of letting outside perspectives in. I was worried that commiting to a blog would be just that--a commitment to which I might not be able to remain faithful. How often do you blog? What are the parameters of your writing? Is it commentary or criticism? Is it still mine once I release it? Who gets to read it? Who wants to read it?
I wanted to write the prelude to my very own and very first blog concisely and carefully. Instead, I just sat down and began typing. Sometimes that is how the best work arrives, though, so off we go. If you read blogs, and you have chosen to follow mine, I would like to thank you for lending me your eyes for a few minutes. Maybe what I have to say will affect you deeply. Maybe it won't. At very least, I hope you find my words interesting, encouraging, and maybe even a little entertaining.
The Hole In The Fence is, for now anyway, the title of my blog. I didn't know you had to title these things, and it's fitting really, since I find the hardest things to develop in my own writing are titles and character names. With any piece of writing I produce, I feel a connection to it, so naming it becomes a very stressful enterprise--not unlike naming a child. So as the prompt came up for me to name this thing, I was totally unprepared, and almost shut the damn thing down before I even started. Chock that up to my insecurity. I sat for a moment or two, finished my coffee, and decided on the title you see before you. "The Hole In The Fence" was once the title of a children's story about cartoon vegetables living happily in a garden, when one day, through a hole in the perimeter fence, a Mushroom pays a visit, telling tales and offering wisdom from beyond. As the story progresses, he turns out to be a drug dealer whose intention is to ensnare the young vegetables with more than just his stories. The book, which you should still be able to find in your local library, was a great allegory of the perils of drug use, peer pressure, etc. It also serves as a cautionary tale; the world outside the fence has so much to offer, but you must always remember that both good and bad are always lurking. It is up to you to make your own decisions. When you peer through that hole in the fence, you might not be prepared for what it is you see, or think you see. However, you will never know what's really out there if you don't take a look once in a while.
I also compiled a collection of poems and short stories many years ago, when I was a naive and budding young writer which I called "The Chain-mail Fence". I came up with this premise that writers are sitting on the fence, watching and casting a judgment of some sort on the world around them. I came up with an allegory of the stories and poems being links in a chain-mail fence. If chain-mail fences even exist, I've yet to actually see one. But for a 17-year-old learning a craft, it made sense at the time. Most of the stories and poems from it are a little embarrassing to read now, but it's a lot like looking back through your school pictures. You can't help but smile, because all that you were then helped shape you into who you are now, and will continue to become. Some of those poems made it into my Facebook notes. Some I'll post or repost here. Some will never see the light of day. That's fine. Just remember to take them for what they were, are, and will be.
Just a quick side note to the title discussion; another potential title was "I Write What I Like", which pretty much sums up what I intend for this blog. That is another borrowed title, this one from a very different source. I once did some research for a paper in university about the life of Steven Biko, a very inspiring young doctor who was murdered by the South African police in 1977. Biko was an activist against apartheid, in a time when it was very dangerous to do so. He wrote opinion pieces for a local newspaper, and his column (and subsequent omnibus collection, released posthumously) was titled "I Write What I Like". I opted not to use it because my blog is not meant to be a platform for protest per se. Some bloggers want to change the world with their words. The ones that end up changing the world often had no design to do so in the first place. All blogs are soapboxes, but to even hint that mine can stand beside Biko's seems a bit ludicrous, so "The Hole In The Fence" it is.
