Just recently I saw a post doing the rounds on social media warning of the intention to mine our posts, conversations and photographs for use by AI bots. This post said the initiative would include our direct (private) messages, but a friend pointed me to a Snopes article reassuring us that this isn't true — everything else, yes, but not the direct messages.
True or not, I thought the time might have come to go through my accumulation of direct messages and delete them. I do this routinely with my posts and my reactions to the posts of others. Apart from my interactions on the archive of the online church I started during the Covid lockdown, I clear out the whole lot from time to time. I remove it all.
I found the deletion of these messages surprisingly difficult. Most of my friends on social media are not people I originally met in person (some I never have physically met, ever), but are readers of my books who found their way to me wanting to chat about aspects of life and thought, and from there became real friends. So, many of my messages were first encounters with strangers who became dear friends, explaining what they had found in my writing that made them want to get to know me better. I read through their stories of life experiences and faith journey, and found it hard to lay them finally to rest.
And then there were several conversations with friends who have now died — some were inconsequential in content, but even so it felt sad to cut that final tie.
But there was one message I'd saved that made me laugh a lot, both at the time I received it and now re-discovering it after years had gone by.
It was from a young man who had contacted me about something I've now long forgotten, perhaps a medical issue because I belong to a handful of self-help groups to do with health challenges, and individuals message each other sometimes.
But in the course of this particular correspondence it had been relevant to mention that I work from home because I'm a writer. It was his response that amused me. He said this (I think he's long forgotten my existence or I wouldn't post it here):
There are, of course, people who write books in their spare time, and that usually becomes clear in the first few pages. And there are many people who (oddly) confuse writing with typing, something you can take up and put down, nothing that particularly occupies the mind.
That recalls to mind a conversation I had during the years I was involved in a local group for Christian women who held regular weekly coffee mornings at their centre of operations. I was on the rota for overseeing these meetings, and on one occasion asked to be excused as I was trying to finish writing a novel.
Being the hostess of these events required one to make tea and coffee, be available to chat with whoever dropped in, serve cake etc, and clean up the kitchen at the end.
When I said I needed to finish off writing the book for a deadline, one of the good ladies, puzzled, asked me if I couldn't simply bring my laptop with me and do the writing in between whatever else ended to be attended to.
That was the moment I realised the extent to which people see a writer typing and think, that's it — that's the only thing going on; sitting at a table and typing, that's how books are made. And they too might have a go at writing one if only they can spare the time to sit down at the table and start to type.
To the young man far too busy on important matters to find enough spare time that he could do what I do, I think I simply encouraged him to have a go. To the good sister who couldn't see why bringing my laptop along to the coffee morning (and host it) might not work perfectly well, I simply said, no, I can't do that.
But both those memories still make me laugh, looking back.
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