“Depression, truth be told, is both boring and threatening as a subject of conversation.”  So writes Daphne Merkin in her essay on depression in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine.  As someone who has struggled with depression and anxiety off and on (and, lately, fortunately, it’s been mostly off), Merkin’s essay resonated with me in a far deeper way than any essay I had read before.  Perhaps it’s the cold truth of her insights:  “Surely this is the worst part of being at the mercy of your own mind, . . .:  the fact that there is no way out of the reality of being you, . . ..”

For most of my life, I found the reality of “being me” often hard to bear.  Like Merkin, “I was fascinated by people who had the temerity to bring down the curtain on their own suffering,” people like Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton, and Sylvia Plath, who also just happened to be writers.

Merkin takes us on a journey from her most recent bout of deep depression, through her attempts at recovery in a clinic, and, finally, to a seemingly spontaneous resolution.  Granted, this is her own personal story, and others who suffer from chronic depression might have very different experiences.  As with so many other ailments, both physical and psychological, one size does not fit all.  But I finished Merkin’s article feeling heartened, at the least because the fog lifts just enough for her to imagine a life without it.

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No, I’m not going to bash Twitter.  The application, like Facebook, is great in and of itself.  But how these apps are used begs the question of mundanity.  See Matt Bai’s essay in today’s New York Times:  “The Chatty Classes.”   Bai poses the irony of how, back in 2004, presidential hopeful Bob Graham’s meticulous (and mundane) daily diary was used to criticize him as “weird”; and yet only a few short years later, that same meticulousness and mundanity is embraced by both celebs and the hoi polli on apps like Twitter.

I’m a daily user of both Twitter and Facebook, and I love how these apps have expanded my world to include like-minded souls that I might otherwise never have “met.”  I find both to be necessary to my growth and exposure as a writer; yet, I use them quite differently.  With Facebook, I’m connected to family and friends, not just writing groups and colleagues, so my expectations of “status updates” are quite different than they are for Twitter.  But I initially joined Facebook as an aunt wanting to be more connected with her nephews and nieces.  I joined Twitter as a writer, with a very different set of expectations.

Bai likens Twittering to the “jabbering [of Tom Hanks on his island] to his battered volleyball so as not to lose touch with his own existence.”  I am perpetually surprised by how many Twitterers feel compelled to note their every move and thought.  I’ve considered “unfollowing” some Twitterers simply because the ratio of mundane vs profound tweets is much too great.  How many tweets about “going out for coffee” or “just woke up” must I slog through before I can find that one good tweet that links me to a good blog or essay or article on writing?  I can’t imagine anyone (not even my friends and family) caring a twit about whether and when I got out of bed; whether I liked my coffee or think it’s a lovely day; whether or not I’m going to shave my legs or try to wax them.

I realize that many if not most Twitterers are communicating with friends and family and so such comments might actually be encouraged and enjoyed.  Then why not have separate Twitter accounts–one personal, one professional–and spare those follow you out of professional interest from having to scroll (seemingly endlessly) through tripe.  It can be done.  It wouldn’t be difficult, and it would be interesting to see how your camp of followers might divide up.

Sunday’s NY Times Book Review section has a great essay by Terrence Rafferty called Shelley’s Daughters. Rafferty remarks on the irony that the “mother” of the horror novel gave birth to more sons than daughters, e.g., Poe, King, Lovecraft. And the few daughters she may claim did not always write prolifically in the genre of horror (Rafferty mentions Shirley Jackson and Charlotte Perkins Gilman to support this observation). The best part of his essay, of course, is the brief reviews he gives of contemporary women writers of horror. Don’t, however, expect to find reviews of the popular vampire novels by Laurell K. Hamilton and Stephenie Meyer: Rafferty notes that their novels “don’t appear to be concerned, as true horror, should be, with actually frightening the reader.” Rather, he comments on novels by Sara Gran, Alexandra Sokoloff, Sarah Langan, and Elizabeth Hand; writers new to me, but whose work I look forward to reading (especially, Langan whose novel The Keeper I just ordered).

Frankly, I would love to write ** good ** horror. I tried my hand at it in last year’s National Novel Writing Month and, most recently, in a short story that has been revised multiple times. But writing horror is much more difficult than I thought it would be. Anyone can write gory scenes of zombies eating humans or ghosts wielding axes and chopping off body parts; but to instill cold prickly fear in the reader requires skill and precision. I grew up addicted to horror films, mostly from Great Britain but pre-Hammer Film Productions, and the ones that always scared me the most were those that were heavy on suspense: What’s behind the door? Is the monster there? Should our hero open it? What’s behind the door?

Writing horror down is not for the feint of heart.

We have finally arrived at a point in our maturity as a society that a woman could at least be a serious contender for the presidency.  Women of my generation have had the satisfaction of seeing glass ceilings shattered, from corporate offices to the US Supreme Court.  But where one glass ceiling may be removed, another will take its place.  According to this Sunday’s NY Times, the blogosphere (purportedly a true democratic marketplace of ideas) has its own glass ceiling. The article states that while 14% of men and 11% of women blog, women’s contributions to the web are much less likely than men’s to be noted:  ”Yet, when Techcult, a technology Web site, recently listed its top 100 Web celebrities, only 11 of them were women. Last year, Forbes.com ran a similar list, naming 3 women on its list of 25″ (click here for the full NY Times article).  

Sigh.  Do female bloggers need to use male pseudonyms to be taken seriously, as did our scribbling ancestor George Eliot (nee Mary Ann Evans)?  Consider Techcult’s methodology for selecting the “top 100 Web celebrities”:

“We gathered around 200 potential names and queried them on Google to see how many results they would generate. Some minor adjustments were made, and the 100 names with the highest number of results were profiled [...]” (click here to read the full article).  As someone who works in the social sciences, I had to wince when I read this.  So not scientific!  From whom did they gather 200 names?  If you were not in that first 200, then you were SOL.  Judging from the comments to the article, a number of male “Web celebrities” were overlooked, but, really, only 11 out of 100 are women in this list?  And one of the women is Tila Tequila?

Perhaps my sister bloggers should take comfort in knowing that at least this list was so unscientifically produced but it’s not worth taking seriously … except that it’s cited in the NY Times, thereby giving it a broader reach than it deserves.  But let’s take heart.  The blogosphere is relatively new, and it is a great tool with which to connect with each other, giving us a strength in numbers that would have been unimaginable in the days of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.  We can start by joining networks such as BlogHer.

Blog on, sisters!