I’ve never kept a journal. I’ve tried. About 15 times. I’m a writer, after all. We’re supposed to really dig journals and write in them every single day. But every journal I’ve ever started ends after about one or two (really lame) entries. Then it’s nothing but blank pages. And my kind hates blank pages.

I’ve given it some thought, and here’s what I’ve come up with as to why I can’t embrace the journal:

1. There’s no audience. Apparently, I need this, regardless of whether or not my stuff gets read. When I write, I assume that at some point, someone, anyone, will read my writing. So in a sense, I’m addressing those people; I’m writing for them (as well as for myself). But a journal? I simply can’t bring myself to write for or to an inanimate object. I tend to ask a lot of questions in my writing (Why does the world suck so hard? How do we survive it? Why do we survive it?), but as much as I’d like it to, a cheap empty book of paper sure as shit can’t answer them.
2. It’s too forced. Dear Inanimate Object, Today I went to work. It was fine. Afterwards, I went over to J and Cris’s for dinner, and everyone got really drunk and hated on one another. I said a lot of dumb stuff, mostly because I’m really sad about the fact that my dad has cancer and scared that he’s going to die. It really sucks. But tomorrow’s another day! Your pal, Julie. The thing is, I’m slow to process and express myself. This is why I’m a writer. I think too much and need more time to express those thoughts. They can’t be rushed or forced. Trust me. I’ve tried.
3. I sound like a fucking idiot. See #1 and #2. After I’m dead, and my children are wading through the crap that was my life, I don’t want them stumbling upon a journal that confirms what they’ve always suspected: their mother is a complete and total moron with absolutely nothing interesting to say. This may be true, but I don’t want to leave them with hard evidence.

In college, as a super nerdy wanna-be writer, I would jot down passages from my favorite books. I would photocopy poems or clip quotations out of magazines that spoke to me or perfectly expressed how I felt. I accrued so many of these clippings and copies and quotes that I started taping them into a notebook. Only when I had filled two of these notebooks did I realize that this was my way of keeping a journal.

Because I seem to be equally bad at maintaining this blog, in addition to Julie originals, I plan to post some writing that you’d find in my kind of journal. Not necessarily because I’m lazy (which I am), but because most of the time, other writers just write it so much better.

Those Winter Sundays
By Robert Hayden

Sundays too my father got up early
And put his clothes on in the blueback cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

A while back, my best friend Lizzi gave me a tough-love speech about my writing.

“You don’t know how lucky you are,” she told me. “So many people don’t know what they want to do with their lives. You do. You do, and you’re not doing it.”

She had (has) a point.

My other friends express the occasional interest/concern, too. Just this past week, my friend Adam asked me about The Book.

I attempted to dodge him, mumbling something about if I wanted to work on it I would and when the time is right and I’ll get to it eventually. Sensing my neuroses, he said, “I’m not sure whether or not to ask about it. It’s probably annoying, huh?”

But the truth is, it wasn’t (isn’t). No, I told him. It’s good for me to be reminded of That Gift I’ve Been Given That I Haven’t Been Doing Shit With. My squandered talent. The thing that I supposedly love to do and yet don’t. Good to be reminded, because I spend a lot of time trying not to think about it. Because when I do think about it, I can’t come up with a good reason why. Why I continue to squander and ignore and waste and dodge.

Theories abound. I’m afraid? Maybe. I don’t think I’m talented, good enough, interesting enough, enough enough enough to “make it?” Probably. I’m lazy and just want to watch TV for the rest of my life? Perhaps. I write marketing copy all day and can’t muster any more creativity in my spare time? Could be. The Book and the issue of what the fuck to do with it and how the fuck to re-write it have so mentally constipated me that I’m literally unable to work on anything else? A good guess. I’m not really excited about my life and haven’t had sex in a very long time or been in a relationship since Bush’s first term? Okay. A combination of all of these things and more? Sure, why not?

My point being: I have no fucking clue why I’d rather write about not writing than write something of actual substance. And without understanding the why, I’m not quite sure how to overcome the problem, other than just telling myself to get off my ass and goddammit do something already. But that hasn’t really been working out so well for me.

Own worst enemy? Yep, that would be me.

My only consolation is that I’m not alone. Other writers experience the same damn issues. In her post on writeforyourlife.net, a site about writing that I read in lieu of writing myself, Manuela Boyle breaks it down:

There are lots of us writers who make their living doing the thing they love; and yet as a result, don’t make their living in the way they’d really love.

What I’m trying to say is that the writing skillset is like France: much bigger than you thought when you get there, and that if you’ve got talent, then hell, make like Simon Cowell and put it to work.

But let’s pause and think about the writer’s gentle soul awhile. Some of the copywriters I know have literary or non-fiction ambitions; others quite simply, don’t.

Some are lazy when it comes to that magnus opus, some think they’ll eventually get round to it, and others know their own creative practice is good for them, like greens are, but don’t want to participate.

A handful—and here’s the type that impresses me most—do both. They write copy in the day, and create worlds of their own by night.

What of the writer who is (g) all of the above? What will light a fire under her ass? Though a better question might be: If the fire isn’t already lit, is it even worth hunting around for those matches?

In middle school, I decided that I wanted to be a journalist. I wanted to write, and this seemed like the most “practical” approach. I envisioned myself interviewing people, writing under tight deadlines, and working in a frantic office where everyone had had too much coffee. Neither one of my parents drank coffee, so I envisioned it as something that other, more exciting adults did. Something that professional journalists did.

When I entered high school, I signed up to write for the school paper. I was assigned to the features section, and for a while, this suited me just fine. News could be boring, I reasoned. Feature articles would allow me to flex my creative muscles and write about real people and the things that were important to them. I am and always have been a human-interest kind of girl.

Every month, my editor would assign a topic, and at first, I loved it. I wrote about the “fun” stuff, wrote the articles that people would actually read—about Valentine’s Day and beloved childhood toys and the reasons that teenagers spent so much time on the phone.

But after a year or so, I was bored. I wrote my articles during my lunch period, an hour before they were due. I had mastered the features formula: catchy lede, set-up, quote, transition, quote, transition, quote, transition, quote, cute full-circle concluding sentence. And my assigned topics got dumber and more ridiculous. One of the last articles I wrote was about PDA. Public displays of affection. During a free period, I had wandered the halls of my school, interrupting couples mid-grope to ask them why. Why are you touching your girlfriend’s breast in the library?

So, when the newspaper advisor offered me an opportunity to write an op-ed, I jumped at the chance. Maybe this was my true calling! I thought. I would use my words to take a stand, to convince people that I was right and that they were wrong. My articles would have substance!

My assigned topic: homophobia. Was homophobia a problem in our school? The year was 1995: of course homophobia was a problem. I got to work, discussing the topic at length with my friends and teachers. And I listened. I listened as boys called one another “faggots” and passed judgment with “that’s so gay.” I asked my fellow students why they used these expressions and received some interesting answers. I poured my heart into that article, believing that it could open a dialogue and, in some very small way, actually make a difference.

But all of my hard work was for nothing. My advisor had wanted an op-ed that expressed her opinion, one that wouldn’t ruffle any feathers or include the “f” word. Re-write it, she told me, and argue the other side. In other words, my advisor wanted me to lie. Worse, she wanted me to compromise my entire belief system, the very core of my being, the kind of person I aspired to be.

I was enraged. I told her that I quit, and marched into my guidance counselor’s office, demanding that he drop me from the newspaper. I fought back tears as I explained what had happened.

“This is absolutely no problem,” he assured me. “You’re doing the right thing.”

As it so happened, my guidance counselor, in addition to being sympathetic and understanding, was gay.

That night, I told my mom that I had quit the newspaper. She had just walked through the door, and was distracted, sifting through the mail.

“What?” she said, whipping her head up to look at me. “Why?” She knew how important my journalistic aspirations were to me.

I broke down then. I had never quit anything in my life, and this had been my dream. More than anything, though, I was so disappointed. So disillusioned. How could the world work like this? How did people who cared as much as I did even stand a chance?

I cried and cried, and when I stopped, my mom told me that she was proud of me. For quitting? I asked. No, she said. For standing up for what you believe in.

Today is my 31st birthday. It’s much calmer, much more relaxed than 30 was. One might call it anticlimactic, but that implies a let-down of some kind, unfulfilled expectations, and I don’t feel that way. The nice thing about relaxed is that it allows you to contemplate your age, your life, and your accomplishments in a productive way.

I was reminded of the above story this past weekend, and thought that it was a fitting 31st birthday tale. People who have lived through their 30s often tell me that it’s the best decade, that you know yourself so much better and subsequently have an easier time of it, enjoy it more.

I may have given up on a childhood dream when I was 16, but at 31, I am thankful for that experience—and where it led me. I am thankful for the people who have shaped me, shaped my life, made it better.

As I move further and further into adulthood, I hope for many things. But mostly, I hope that I continue to be the kind of person who makes her mother proud.

One of the challenges of writing memoir is that there are so many ways to tell a single story. So many different points of view (who will be the narrator?), so many slight variations on memory. I remember it one way, she remembers it a different way. Who’s to say which one is true?

All you can do is remain true to your own memory, and to tell the story, your story, the story of your family or friends, as truthfully as you remember it. As truthfully as you feel it.

In her novel, No One You Know, Michelle Richmond writes:

Every story is flawed, every story is subject to change. Even after it is set down in print, between the covers of a book, a story is not immune to alteration. People can go on telling it in their own way, remembering it the way they want. And in each telling the ending may change, or even the beginning. Inevitably, in some cases it will be worse, and in others it just might be better. A story, after all, does not only belong to the one who is telling it. It belongs, in equal measure, to the one who is listening.

As I begin to re-write my own memoir (soon? One day? Years from now? This week?), as I start over from the beginning, though the characters and setting and events will remain the same, the story could change. Hopefully (please? Pretty please?) for the better.

Copyblogger recently posted a list of 73 ways to become a better writer. It’s a great list, one that I should take to heart—a list that should inspire me to get off of my ass and, you know, write. 

Unfortunately, these days I could probably come up with my own list: 73 ways to suck as a writer. #1 would be: Don’t write. #2: Watch Netflix DVDs of The West Wing instead of writing. #3: Sit down to write then check Facebook instead. #4: Turn the TV back on. You get the picture.

I’m in a slump. It’s not a block. A block would imply that there’s something I want to write, something percolating in my brain that I simply can’t get out. The truth is much more pathetic. There ain’t nothing in there. Zip. Zilch. Nada. The truth is, I’m bored.

At the moment, my life is boring. My friends will protest, but I will insist upon this fact. Everything is good, calm. No almost relationships (February). No self-inflicted angst (March). No break-ups/anniversaries of ex-boyfriends’ deaths (April). No debilitating, self-destructive depressions (May). No weddings or weekend trips (June).

For most people, boring is a good thing. No more drama, baby. In our lives. (A good song, by the way.) But for a person who writes about her life, it’s a major buzz-kill/mood-breaker/cock-blocker. I sit down to write, and all I feel is malaise. I could write, eh, or I could go to bed early. What does it matter?

The obvious solution is to make something exciting happen in my life, right? I could meet someone! And fall in love! And write about it! If only life worked that way. As I’m still learning, there’s not a whole lot about my situation that’s in my control. Except for my writing. I do control that, and I can make that piece more interesting, more prominent.

Except that right now, I can’t. You see my dilemma.

But like an impotent man gunning for that erection, I will keep trying. I’ve even pulled The Book out of hiding. It’s on my coffee table. I’ve re-read the prologue. I’ve even re-written the beginning in an effort to start over, though it lacks a certain something.

I think they call it inspiration.

I’ve got a new post up at Fringe Magazine. 

Same old questions; still waiting on those answers.

This is sad: The column that gave many Emerson grads their first legitimate clips—myself included—is no longer.

You can read more about this passing, as well as read columns by my former classmates, here.

Thank you, Soapbox. You will be missed.

I’ve been busy. I know everyone says that, but I mean really busy. I’ve lucked out with some freelance work; things have fallen into my lap at just the right time. And I’ve said yes to everything, because, well, I’m unemployed and can’t afford to say no.

In the midst of my busyness, however, I managed to score a full-time job. An absolute miracle in this economy. Though my full-time gig doesn’t officially begin until February 2, I’ve had to prove my worth and be “brought up to speed.” What does this mean exactly? More work.

I’ve spent the last 10 days or so working, on average, 12 hours a day. I haven’t slept much. I’m on an every-other-day shower schedule, which means that I smell great. And my back is so tense that I’ve taken to (lamely) pounding on it myself.

Last Wednesday, I attended a freelance-writing seminar. It attracted the usual oddballs—both actual writers and the people who think that because they have cats/ride horses/live in their mother’s basement and love to make up stories, they, too, can be writers. One woman asked dozens of bizarre-o questions, though one question in particular was somewhat useful to me: What should you do when you’ve overcommitted yourself? Is it okay to turn down a project?

The presenter, a published freelance writer and editor, said that as a rule, unless the project sucks big balls (my words, not hers), she never passes on a writing gig. “Some weeks will go by, and you have no work,” she said. “Then other weeks are just insane, so I tell myself that those weeks are just going to be about work. But, really, having too much work as a freelancer is not a bad problem to have.”

In other words, take work where and when you can get it, and thank your lucky stars for it. 

So I am and I will. Even if it lands me in traction.

I’ve got a new post up at Fringe Magazine. Surely I’m not alone. What’s the most annoying thing you’ve ever had to do in order to get a job?

Writers are a strange breed. Especially nonfiction/memoir writers (though, of course, we’re not nearly as strange as the poets).

Often, in our writing, we reveal some of our most private thoughts, secrets, and actions. For example: Before I wrote “The Spirit Loved One,” only three people knew that I had wet my bed at the age of 18—my mom, my dad via my mom, and my best friend (Lizzi). Now it’s out there for the world to know.

Yet, despite our startling revelations and admissions in our work, in our lives, writers continue to be immensely private people. Even our closest friends and family members don’t always know what we’re experiencing, grappling with, obsessing over, or suffering.

For me, at least, this dichotomy explains why I am a writer. It’s not easy for me to feel vulnerable, or to ask for help, or to put myself out there and watch how people react or don’t react in ways that are helpful or hurtful to me. I spend most of my time up in my head, analyzing and re-analyzing, trying to determine why things and people are the way they are, what I can do to be better and more, what I might have done that’s potentially hurtful or not enough. (Self-flagellation is one of the first things you learn in Writing for Beginners.)

Writing allows me to step out of my head in a way that simply opening up to people does not. By writing about a vulnerable feeling or time in my life, not only am I expressing something that I can’t express in person, but I’m also turning that expression into a story. It’s not me, in other words; it’s a story about one part of, or one experience in, my life. A story that, if I’ve done my job right, makes a larger statement about the human condition or the world in which we live.

Turning a difficult personal experience into a story and letting the world read about it feels safer and easier to me than sitting down with people I’m close to and telling them about it.

Like I said, writers are weird.

Of course, when strangers read your very personal work, they feel closer to you. For the writer, this is both a blessing and a curse. In addition to our own selfish motivations for putting pen to paper, we write to connect with and reach out to people. To assure our readers that, hey, whatever you’re feeling or hoping or fearing, we’re doing it, too. Because writers spend so much of their time feeling different and alone, we dedicate our lives to assuring other people that they aren’t those things. Look, we’re saying, we’re all in this mess together. Ain’t it grand?

And, yet, though we cultivate a connection through our words, the reader doesn’t know the writer. The reader knows only what the writer has chosen to share. What the writer writes and who the writer is are very different things.

Again I return to this: Writers are immensely private people. At readings I’ve attended, I’ve watched authors struggle with questions that have nothing to do with their writing and everything to do with their lives. In these instances I’ve felt indignant. Back off, I want to say. It’s the work that’s important, not the writer.

Then again, perhaps it’s unfair of writers to feel this way. To put so much out there, but insist that what’s out there has nothing to do with the whole of us. To insist that our writing isn’t us, but instead just a tiny piece of the vast, complex puzzle. We’re like one giant tease of personal information; we let our readers in, then slam the door in their faces.

But, like it or not, this is the way we do things—in some cases, it’s the only way we know how to do things. It’s how I cope with my hardships and my world. If you read my work, if you read my blog, you probably don’t know me the way that you think you do. You know only the piece that I choose to share with you.

The rest of the pieces, or rather, the whole, are reserved for a select few. They’re the pieces that the public at large will never know. Ironically, they’re also the pieces that allow me to do what I do. The pieces that make me a writer.