Blog as living memoir

Harvey McQueen is a dear friend, a former teacher and influencer of education policy, and a lifelong writer. His life is brutally confined and constrained now, as a result of a degenerative muscle disease.

Very recently, in February, Harvey discovered blogging. Straight away he saw its potential to expand his wheelchair world. He was born to blog, and Stoatspring has galloped ahead as he writes poems, reminisces and thinks aloud on the screen. (Thinks visibly?)

This blog is settling into a pattern similar to an old time movie session. Cartoons, newsreels & brief clips followed by interval and then the main feature.

Stoatspring shows the power of blogging. When old age hits you like a mallet on the head... when the real world and real time shrivel in front of your nose... when real books take far too long to be published — along comes the blog.

At this very moment thousands, possibly millions of older people are musing, I'd like to write a book. A book about my life. Or my ideas. I'd like to write poems. Or something. For the grandchildren, perhaps, or for my friends. No, let's be honest —for me, dammit!

The funny thing is, most of these people do have time to write: not years perhaps. But they do have time in the week, the day, the hour.

What they never had before is a tool that becomes a living book with three clicks. A book that self-publishes to the entire world the moment they click Publish. A way to talk to all the friends and family who feel like listening, at a time they choose.

Bravo dear Harvey. I may have indirectly bullied you into blogging, thank goodness. And as for the rest of you... stop moaning about wanting to write a book, and do it online. Apart from anything else, personal blogging is the biggest fun.