Toe in the Water

A Question

A Question

I have an interesting question. At least, it’s interesting to me and may be the same for others as well. Some may even have an answer to it. Before I ask the question, I must tell you about Harry (without whom the question cannot be fully understood).

Way back when the world was young and the internet no more than a decade or so old, I met Harry in something called Yahoo Chat. He lived in Illinois and I was still in England at the time but we had similar interests and soon formed a strong friendship. Then I came to the States, settling first in Oklahoma and then in Massachusetts. My son back in England persuaded me to start a personal blog detailing my experiences in the States. As a web developer, he designed and built a blog for me and I did what I knew best - writing.

While this was happening, I discovered that Harry was a writer too. I discovered a link to some of his work and sneaked off to take a look. He was good. In fact, there was so much colour and fun in his stuff that I, ever lacking in confidence, feared that he might be better than me.

Even so, I felt duty bound to tell Harry how highly I regarded what I had read and we began to talk about the writing game. As part of that, I showed him my blog and, the next thing I know, Harry has started a blog of his own and is filling it with his delicious tales about and based on his rather vagabond life story.

Very quickly Chat was abandoned and we wrote furiously every day, adding to the blogs and then commenting upon each other’s efforts. Yes, there was an element of competition in it all (that was inevitable, given how alike we were in so many ways) but more importantly because we spurred each other on to greater heights. Other writers we had known in chat started blogging too and there formed a small but passionate circle of writers that interacted every day.

It was a heady time that lasted for a few years but fell apart very quickly in the end. One of our circle disappeared without a word (Andrea did some detective work and established that the cause was nothing to do with the group but originated in the real world outside). Then Harry, who had been ill for years, sometimes severely, departed for the brighter realms of the great publishing house in the sky. Without him to hold us together, the remaining members drifted away to other things.

For a while I existed without the group, somehow still writing the occasional addition to the blog, but it was hard going without that glorious conversation on all things that we’d had. And then I realised that I would just have to find another group. Google suggested Writing dot Com and the rest, as they say, is history.

I love WdC but there are still occasions when I miss Harry. It’s strange that someone I have never met in real life could have such a hold on me. I am not normally sentimental but today I had the idea of seeing if Harry’s old blog was still there.

And it is. It runs from November 2004 until April 2010. I read a few of the posts and then noticed that the comments were still existent at the end. And I was one of the commenters (under my chat name of Wyrfu). That brought things back even more strongly.

But it was the quality of Harry’s writing that raised the question for me. He wrote with an easy style, ignoring grammar when it suited him, and speaking in a natural voice that I’m sure was exactly how he spoke in daily life. It was what he wrote of that really speaks to the reader, however. Tales, both fictional and autobiographical, that come alive on the page as though we had been there too. And these interspersed with the occasional whimsical verse or poem. It is something that I cannot bear to think will be lost and gone in a few years as all those who knew Harry follow him up to his home in the sky.

So this is my question. It is not my business to decide what should be done with Harry’s work. That must surely lie with his wife and family. But would it be unseemly of me somehow to point people to his blog and encourage them to read? The thing is out there on the net and, as we all know, what’s on the net is no longer ours - it belongs to the world. Do I dare to be a signpost to the writing of such an unknown master without some sort of go ahead from someone?

So there is my question. I’d be interested in anyone’s answer.


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