Pen-Elayne on the Web

This is my third attempt to get this blog to stick; this time I’m taking no chances and doing it on a word processor first...

I was one of those kids who always looked forward to going back to school in September. Maybe it had something to do with my Jewish heritage, commemorating the new year in the fall. Since this is the first of Tishrei, I figured it was as good a time as any to embark on a weblog.

I was born Elayne Tina Wechsler on 2 December 1957. This was going on then, as was this, but I don't know of too much else. Famous people born on that date include Britney Spears, Nelly Furtado, Monica Seles, Lucy Liu, Maria Callas, Gianni Versaci and Georges Seurat. I’m one of the many non-famous ones.

Still, that’s never stopped me from writing. When I was 13, in the days of 6¢ stamps, I had about 150 penpals. I wrote “Dream Marriage” stories (like they used to have in the bubblegum teen mag Tiger Beat) and passed them around in class, I wrote for the school paper and club newsletters. I started a diary and kept it, on and off, through the beginning of my first real courtship (which led to my first marriage), when I found someone I could chat with regularly. Even so, in my 20’s I self-published a zine (actually two, but this one was more specialized and not as seminal) and participated in lots of apas. In my 30’s I discovered e-mail and Usenet. Now in my 40's, I write the occasional comic book story (usually for a charity book) and post a lot to message boards. So I'm still doing lots of chatty in-print conversation and essays; only the medium has changed.

As I approach my 45th birthday later this year, I take stock (as I'm wont to do this time of year anyway) and find myself more or less happy. My first husband Steve and I went in different directions a few years back (although we keep in touch, having been friends before and after the marriage) and have both remarried. My current husband, Robin, is an amazing artist who teaches me something new every day. We live at present in New York City (up in the northwest Bronx on the mainland) but, due to my increasing inability to deal with internal apartment building noise, are taking the first steps towards house-buying, probably around where I grew up in New Jersey. My day job as a secretary to a "mercurial" CEO is never boring and helps pay the bills, but I look at it as more a means to an end than anything else. The worst part about it is the lack of privacy and constant state of interruption; between that and the noise from our upstairs neighbors at home, it's often hard to concentrate enough to form coherent paragraphs, and I'm sure as a result my writing ability has deteriorated somewhat.

But, coherent or not, writing to me is kind of like breathing, I'm always going to do it even if I come up a bit short after the daily uphill climbs. (Note to self: look for house that's not on a hill!) So that's the intro, and I hope I get better as this goes along. Thanks for reading!