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.

As some of you know, in addition to blogging on my own site, I have the privilege of blogging for Fringe Magazine about post-MFA life.

I have a new post up today.

For the complete Fringe/Julie experience, or to catch up on what you’ve missed, click here.

You may also want to check out the magazine itself, which is quite good and currently features a story by one of my fellow MFA grads.

I’ve got a new Soapbox column in the Weekly Dig this week. Check it out.

Who knew unemployment could be so inspiring?

In today’s Boston Globe, columnist Alex Beam criticizes writer Lauren Slater for what he calls “oversharing.” Referring to her recent New York Times column, in which she discusses her lack of sex drive, Beam writes:

Lauren, whom I know a little, is a veteran revealer, so the notion that she would share the intimacies of the marriage bed with millions of readers was nothing new. Over the years, she has written about her struggles with cancer, depression, and suicidal thoughts.

This piece seemed ever more cringe-inducing because it involved her husband of 10 years (eager for “hot sex”) and her children, who someday may read about Mommy’s first orgasm, her torrid affair with a man not her fiance, and the onset of her personal Big Chill: Sex “interests me these days about as much as playing checkers,” she wrote.

…after reading her column, I wondered: Did we really need to know?

He goes on to mention other literary “exhibits” in “today’s Too Much Information Museum”—V.S. Naipaul, Susan Cheever—citing their “ickiness,” most of which is sexual in nature.

I had a very visceral reaction to Beam’s column. An exhibit, if you will, in the Museum of Julie, called “Shut the fuck up.”

If Beam was so turned off by Lauren Slater’s column, why did he read it? I’ll tell you why: Because it’s fascinating. And honest. And because she (gasp!) reveals so much, perhaps, yes, too much.

While I may not relate to Slater’s predicament, nor approve of her adultery, nor understand her willingness to allow her husband to sleep with other women, I could appreciate her willingness to write about such things and was more than willing to read about them. And apparently, so was Beam.

Here’s the thing about art: You don’t have to read, watch, listen to, or see it if you don’t want to. Don’t like what Lauren Slater has to say? Don’t read her.

Beam concludes his article:

When I mentioned Cain’s cheerily dismissive book review, Cheever countered: “People never review my books, they just end up reviewing me.” But isn’t that because . . . Oh, never mind.

I can’t help but wonder how this man calls himself a writer. My mentor taught me long ago one very valuable lesson about memoir writing: No matter how much a writer “overshares” in his or her work, there is always some division. A writer is not her writing. She is merely its creator. And the fact that Beam even questions this, or insinuates that there is no division, leads me to believe that he doesn’t know the first thing about writing, or oversharing, for that matter.

There is a distinct difference between revealing intimate details about your life for art’s sake (literature) and doing so for other, less noble reasons (reality TV).

Here is my hope: The next time Beam takes the train, he’ll sit down next to a woman who’s feeling particularly chatty. Her boyfriend has just cheated on her, see, and she could use a male perspective. Maybe her boyfriend wouldn’t have cheated, she wonders aloud, had she been more adventurous in bed. What do you think? she’ll turn to Beam and ask. Should I have let him use the handcuffs?

Then and only then will Alex Beam know the true meaning of oversharing.

One of the benefits of enrolling in a creative writing MFA program is meeting other writers. And, no, I’m not talking about the sometimes/semi-well-known professors, or the published writers you meet and stutter around at the thousands of readings you attend.

Rather, I’m referring to the friends you make. The friends who also happen to be up-and-coming writer colleagues. Once you graduate from the program, not only do you have people in your life who share your struggles and know just how big this I’m-a-writer beast is—the anxiety, the motivational issues, the guilt, self-doubt, and self-loathing—but you also have future names to drop.

For example, a few weeks ago, I was able to have the following conversation with my grandmother:

Me [eying her stack of newspapers]: Did you read the Coupling column in last week’s Boston Globe Magazine?

Bubby: I probably did—it’s usually the only thing I like in that magazine. What was it about?

Me: Abstinence, or waiting to have sex until marriage.

B: Oh, yeah! I did read that one. I liked it.

Me: Wasn’t it good? My friend Mike from grad school wrote it.

B: Oh! That’s so neat. I really enjoyed it.

So it may not have been the most interesting conversation ever, but you get my point.

Besides being great people, my friends are incredibly talented: Liz’s work can be found every day at limelife.com. Katherine’s latest article will appear in Education Next in early 2009 (you can read her previous column here). Mike writes about sex (or lack thereof) for Boston Globe Magazine. And Sean will read one of his published short stories at a holiday event next weekend.

I can’t wait to read what they write next. So that I can tell my grandmother about it.

(A shout-out goes to the first person who can identify the source of this quotation without consulting the Internet.)

Admit it. You’ve Googled yourself. More than once.

Back when I had a job and was so bored I could feel parts of my brain shutting down—headache followed by numbness—I searched the Web for Julie Bogart at least once a month.

Unfortunately (or fortunately?), the Julie Bogart who dominates search engines is not yours truly. In fact, she’s pretty much the opposite of me: a Christian writer with a Master’s degree in theology who homeschools her five children.* Massive amounts of electro-shock therapy combined with a lobotomy would not be enough to turn me into this woman. Though I’m sure she’s lovely.

Despite my namesake’s prolific and commendable homeschooling/writing career, I do get the occasional hit—the most thrilling of which I found a few months ago.

A freelance writer by the name of Abby O’Reilly wrote a blog post about my Sirens Magazine article on a feminist Web site in the UK. Never met her before. Didn’t have to pay her to promote my article. She’s just a reader who thought my work was worth mentioning to her own readers. Even more amazing, my article helped her feel better about men. Me! Making women feel better about men!

It’s hard to believe, I know. (Not to mention a bit ironic.) See for yourself:

“…of course, any man in his twenties and above is ruled by the contents of his underpants, right? Actually, no, and reading this article by Julie Bogart made me realise that I am doing a lot of men a disservice by believing what is nothing more than an outdated gender stereotype.”

How cool is that?

*I’m curious: Whom do you find when you Google yourself?

On Thanksgiving, Matt Court, my Web designer, e-mailed me to tell me that the site was ready to go live. I fixed that apostrophe, he told me, and deleted the extra space that no one else would notice but you, so please don’t make me change anything else, and for god’s sake, woman, let me be done with you.

Actually, he didn’t say that at all, but he really should have.

Instead, he politely asked me to let him know when I was ready to change the main page file to live. Then you will be active, he wrote.

Active, and exposed. After a year and a half of conceptualizations and stops and starts and back-and-forths, rounds of designs, content edits, and photo approvals, my site was finally ready. But suddenly I was not.

I waited another 24 hours to write him back with the go-ahead. And when he confirmed that the site was now live, I waited two more hours to tell my nearest and dearest.

Later that night, I lay awake with anxiety. What if everyone hated the site, and then, by extension, hated me? What if they hated it but had to lie and tell me they liked it? What if someone, like a “real” writer, saw my site and scoffed at how few publications I actually have? What if people found my site ridiculous or self-centered or lame?

Soon, other fears kicked in. Fears like: What will my dad think when he reads about the ways in which I’ve pressured men into having sex with me? What if someone from my other world—the professional world in which I do not write about my love life—reads about the dream sex I had with my dead ex-boyfriend? Will my parents think I’m a slut? Will employers not hire me because I think mediums are legit, men who don’t want sex are weirdos, and the best orgasms are achieved through intercourse?

Needless to say, it was a long night.

You’d think that by now, I’d be used to this. After all, I’m a nonfiction writer. I put myself into everything I write, and when I publish a piece, that self is out there for mass consumption. Also? I choose to do this. No one is forcing me to write about some of the most painful and private moments of my life.

But exposing myself (and by this I do not mean stripping down to my underwear, which is actually easier) is always scary. Putting myself in a position to be judged, criticized, rejected, or disowned is never easy.

And yet, for me and my work, it’s absolutely necessary. The stories must be told; the site must go live; the writing must be read. And I must brace myself for the good and bad of public opinion.

As for my dad, well, he should probably brace himself, too—for the stories still to come.