When I was small, one of my favorite "make-believe's" was being a newspaper reporter. Someone had given me an old Remington manual typewriter with keys so hard to push that it took a Herculean effort from my stubby little fingers. Nevertheless, I soldiered on, typing away at a battered office desk tucked under the attic eaves. I can't remember a single "story," but I know they were always important, and I was always on "deadline."
As I grew, the dream grew with me. In sixth grade, I started my own class newspaper, which my friends and I typed laboriously on the old fashioned mimeograph sheets (the kind with the blue backing which left those same stubby fingers smudged in cobalt ink). In middle school, I went on to become the editor of the school newspaper, and began to use the written word to fight for causes I believed in -like getting our bus driver to stop looking the other way when kids smoked in the back of the bus.
When I got to high school, my keyboard of choice changed. I began playing piano in earnest, accompanying, performing, competing, all of which left little time for writing. But the yearning to see my name and my thoughts in print - my byline- never left.
Fast, fast forward to 2006, and the miracle of the internet which allows everyone to create their own little journalistic corner of cyberspace. Finally, a place to write, to pound away at the keyboard to my heart's content. A place to stretch those long dormant writing muscles and express all the thoughts I had about life in general and my own in particular.
What better name for a place like that than Becca's Byline?
How about you? How did you name your blog? Ruth is collecting those stories...share yours with her and the rest of us, won't you?