Chat Rooms And Forum Boards

I used to do chat rooms a lot and yes the non family friendly kind. Countless hours of my life were spent typing into a tiny box, waiting with baited breath to see if anyone would answer. This <cough> detour into the underbelly of the internet actually had some payoff. I’m a blistering fast typist now. Topping out at almost 100 wpm when I hit the zone. And I’d like to believe it helped hone some of my creative talents, though THOSE particular stories will never be part of this blog. 😉

So why am I bring this up? Because, as I surf the net, (looking at writing sites, honest) I see many writer forum boards and a few of them have chat rooms associated with them. I joined one a while back and then popped into it’s attached chat room 

… AND WHOOOSsshhh. I was emotionally teleported back in time nearly two decades or more. The stomach acid churned. I was shocked by my own shock. What if I misspelled something? What if they thought I was a newb…. Oh gosh, what if no one answered at all!!?

Ridiculous! 

I haven’t been back since that soul jarring bit of self discovery, but I think about it often and I wonder… Do they help?

Is it worth wading through the emotional minefield to perhaps learn valuable tips of the trade or are chat rooms and forum boards dinosaurs of old better left to the archeologists?

 

 

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