Especially for You
On the period-product-swag-recipient-to-writer pipeline
I can’t tell you how many times I have recently found myself in the following cycle. An author that I adore posts about a pre-order campaign for their upcoming new book. Excitedly, I add that baby to cart and secure my copy. Months go by. Author pops up again on social media to drum up interest in the new release. Having retained zero memory of my previous purchase, I order the book. Pub day comes, and there they are on my front steps, two copies of the same book. Even though I feel silly in these moments, there is little downside. I get to support writers I enjoy, and I gift my extra copies to my friends.
With Jami Attenberg’s most recent book 1,000 Words, I narrowly avoided completing this cycle. I pre-ordered and then immediately forgot about it. When pub day rolled around, I thought “Oh, I should pick up a copy of that book.” I quickly forgot about that self-direction and then the book showed up at my house, like a present from the Ghost of That Woman Past.
This gift to myself was prescient given that I have been recently preoccupied with questions of what kind of writer I want to be. The first chapter is called Choosing to Write and begins with the question of why one would make this commitment. I started writing this newsletter because I missed the kind of sharing I did on social media back when it was fun. Facebook 15 years ago and Twitter 10 years ago were places where I shared my little quips and found connections, not just platforms for Creating Content.
But reflecting on the joys of being very online in the aughts doesn’t get me closer to the answer of why I write in the first place. For that, I need to go farther back on the timeline.
Flashback to sixth grade. At the start of health class one day, the boys were sent to another room to learn about… wearing deodorant or something (I can only speculate, they never reported back). As I filed into the classroom with all the girls, I saw a box similar to one that could hold a personal pan pizza at each desk. But this wasn’t a pizza party. Inside these boxes emblazoned with Always brand logos were a few pads (with wings!), an informational pamphlet with diagrams of ovaries and fallopian tubes, a mini calendar for tracking your cycle, and a pink hardcover journal.
I don’t remember if they told us that journaling would help us to process our pre-menstrual emotions. I also don’t remember where we stashed our special boxes after the boys returned empty-handed from their meeting about who knows what, definitely NOT anything useful about the female reproductive system. It’s too bad boy puberty didn’t come with merch. Capitalism must have been asleep at the wheel on this one. Maybe if the boys were plied with Drakar Noir-branded journals to sort through their feelings we could have avoided some of their toxic messes.
For whatever reason, I didn’t start writing right away. My Private Journal languished in the corner of my room unopened until the middle of summer. Once I started writing, though, it has become one of the constants in my life, regardless of where I was in my cycle. Are the clues that unlock my writerly identity waiting to be found in my first journal entry?
August 11, 1991
Now I am excited. On Wednesday is the camp dance. I just went to the mall and bought this great new outfit. I want someone to ask me out, but I don’t like anyone now. Maybe some mystery guy will come down from the cosmos and sweep me off my feet. This may sound like I’m some flaky hopeless romantic, but I’m not. I know these things don’t happen. Knights in shining armor don’t come to you. You have to go out ‘n get ‘em. Wubba Wubba Wubba. Goodbye and God Bless.
Less than 100 words yet such a rich text! What I wrote as an almost twelve-year-old is not that far from what I am thinking about now as I Cha-Cha Slide into perimenopause.
My middle school and middle-aged selves both have high hopes for the transformative power of a well-chosen fit. One of my long-held introvert coping mechanisms is to rely on clothing to send the message when I can’t (or don’t want to) find the words. In the summer of ‘91, I was convinced that my new look would give me the confidence to go out there and snag a rom-com hero. Even though that Deelite-inspired look, a sleeveless quarter-zip swing top with a high neck over black capri leggings, finished with a wide white headband, wasn’t enough to overcome the lack of confidence that stopped me from bringing main character energy to the story of my life, I felt great in that outfit. The details of that outfit didn’t make it into my then-new journal, but I remember it now because they made it feel like the person I aspired to be.
I have previously mentioned my frustration that my Ann Taylor shirtdresses and the like are often not enough for some folks to understand that I belong in certain professional spaces. They see my skin and the story concludes before considering my aesthetic. Watch this space as I work through my thoughts on what I try to signal with my current wardrobe.
Beyond my feelings about clothes, the bigger takeaway from that original journal entry is that even on the page, it is hard to admit that I have wants and desires. Being an introverted, type A, high-achieving rule-follower prepared me for academic and professional success, but not so much for sharing my emotional state out loud. The instructions for using that journal nudged me towards at least writing them down. I was willing to admit that I wanted to be wanted, but not yet ready to abandon the idea that being a hopeless romantic was incompatible with the other aspects of my personality. And now, I can tell you readers about my aspirations as an on-and-off romance writer while keeping those details sequestered from other parts of my life.
It seems like I write to make sense of my identity (what I want, how I present myself, what I create) where it feels safe. It could be through a romance novel or observations on whatever it is JLO is doing right now. No matter what, Downtown Julie Brown will always be there as a reminder that I’m never done writing until I throw in a reference to my pop culture obsession of the moment.
All the rest…
I never would have heard about this feature on Formula One if not for the discourse around the fact that it was pulled by the publication. The Streisand Effect strikes again! Thankfully, the internet archive is forever. This is one of the best pieces I have ever read about the sport.
I am also grateful that despite the contraction of legacy media and the rise of stan culture, there are still spaces for thoughtful critiques of celebrity image. The New York Times review of RuPaul’s new memoir (gift link) by poet Saeed Jones is so exquisite it will have a permanent spot in the That Woman canon.
Love the old journal entry!