Last night was bad.

I've been binging on great contemporary female writers... spent a breathless hour reading Anne Carson's "Short Talks" yesterday at the Westmont library, started in on some Gertrude Stein last night, picked up Sontag this morning. Before that, read books that I just enjoyed, from Winterson, Willett, and Foer--okay, there's a guy.

I swung through a few blog posts on my old LJ friendslist. There are a few girls there who write so fucking well...

The funny thing is, most of them have, at some point or another, been intimidated by ME. It is so ludicrous to even think this. My writing is so... plain.

But maybe my mind is something else. Maybe there's potential. I could see it.

I began to panic and defibulate because my boyfriend is not an intellectual, and here I have no friends deeply interested in culture--but that's not true, is it? Indie culture, certainly, a culture of tatters and poorly glued pieces, a WELL-MEANING culture, lovable for that. Maybe even sexy. But. I miss having someone to disucss books with, or to watch old movies with, or who severely needs to see a play every few months just to stay healthy.

And I began to wonder if maybe I'm just not that sort of person, if that's not really my life, and I began to think that I am not really a writer at all, because I have capitulated to a life that is less deeply felt than the one I want to live.

Dav is health for me, sanity, BECAUSE his feelings run in rivlets, not waves. But can a wave ever understand a rivlet? Can a rivlet ever do anything more than temper and shape a wave, to disappate it under arcs and quivers, energy moving outward in descrescendo lines? Where can I go with this?

Why have I pandered to the lowest common denominator?

Why have I hoped for friendship above glory and joy?

Glory and joy first, then friendship. They will come to that.

And the writing will respire and expand and rise flapping and feathers into a sunburst. I do hope so. Holy shit, I fear my own romantic side.

It is nothing but trouble.

It's a tricky title, but mainly it means: Today, through Every Other Day I've Lived So Far. It should get easier from here on out, but you have to start somewhere, and I should have started this long ago.

This is my Writer journal. I suppose there have been lots of these, throughout history, but this one comes from THIS point in history, and from me, which makes it special. My goal is to catelogue my writing process, honestly and consistently, at the end of each day, so that we have an accurate historical record of the evolution of a writer, for when I'm rich and famous. I'm not at all sure it's a good idea to tell people about this blog, at this point, for that reason.

It's terribly conceited, isn't it? It's one thing to post your work as you do it and say, "See? I write. I'm a writer. But--ha ha!--don't take it too seriously! It's just blogging, after all!"

But I'm not going to post my work. Maybe snippets, when appropriate, but rather I want to create what I don't have: a record of a writer recording her daily work and failures and work and failures, as it occurs. It's one thing to know how many times Stephen King got rejected before he made it big, but that's just a number. It's quite another thing to know about his writer's block, or the days anything else seemed better than working on a new story, or the fact that he still consistently spells "definitely" with an "a".

The conceited part is that this assumes that someday I will, in fact, make it big, and this will all be important somehow. That's why I can't tell anyone about this blog yet. If I fail completely, this will be sooooo embarrassing.

So, to catch you up to where I am now, here's my CV:

I started my first journal when I was seven years old. Candlestick Park had just been destroyed by the earthquake of '89 and I guess I felt like someone ought to comment on it. I published a serialized Fitzgerald-esque story in a local magazine when I was ten, and wrote three page mystery stories a la Nancy Drew. My imagination suffered a serious blow with the onset of puberty, when I stopped lying awake in bed telling myself stories about discovering fairy kingdoms and magical princes, and started telling myself stories about having vague, unidentifiable sex acts with them instead. I'd say it wasn't until I turned 21 that I started being able to tell myself stories about anything else. However, in the meantime, I continued writing. I gradually filled a dozen-or-so journals through high school and early college, and decided to transfer to UC Santa Cruz, where I could get a degree in Literature with Creative Writing. My application landed me in the poetry program, unfortunately, where I learned very little about writing and a whole lot about capitulating to peer pressure. I was the co-editor for a literary magazines called Calliope's Notes, was twice published by them, thrice published by another literary journal called Red Wheelbarrow, once published in yet another journal called Turnstile, and once recorded for an audio poetry compilation, also put out by Turnstile. Upon graduation I wrote freelance articles for a local newspaper called the Watsonville Pajaronian, and ultimately quit to tour the countryside, homeless-style. During that period, I blogged about my travels at http://wonderleafy.livejournal.com, and made enough money to pay for all my gas and much of my food. I ended my journey in Montreal, where a man named Dav was in love with me. He invited me to live with him and let him support me while I worked on my writing. I spent the first six months writing short stories, and the second turning the wonderleafy blog into a novel, which is nearly finished. I fear it's all been crap. I am 24 years old and I want to believe I'll get my stuff out there and people will love it and I'll make money and everything will be swell, but that hasn't happened yet. Or, rather, it has happened, but I suspect I am a fraud. However, I am a persistent fraud: just last week I finished the third edit of Wonderleafy. After taking a short break, next week I will begin to read through, do a fourth edit, print out copies, and send them to friendly (and not-so-friendly) readers for critique. Then a final edit. Then send-out.

I am so sick of wonderleafy. I want to write anything else.

And that is the story of that.