Five years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, I started my first online journal, breathing room. It wasn’t a blog in the sense we mean today, as it was more of a writer’s journal, a daily writing practice, a place for unvarnished honesty and fleeting thoughts. But to me the transition from journal to blog was gradual, so I see the whole thing as a continuum.
Here’s an excerpt from my first entry:

33 today, I thought of naming this journal "outliving christ," but that doesn’t feel right. the nice thing about this kind of project is that even if it does one day build an audience (and the public nature of this journal is a fulcrum to promote honesty and self-revelation), there’s sure to be just about no one reading it at first, besides a few well-wishing friends I’ve tipped off in advance, which gives me a little breathing room, a little.

We live in an amazing world. Need more evidence?

Continue reading →

A few months ago, I recall, you reviewed (in the New York Times Book Review) Letters to a Young Contrarian by Christopher Hitchens and Letters to a Young Lawyer by Alan Dershowitz. How about Letters to a Young Free-Lance Writer? In highly abbreviated form, I would offer the following advice to a young person who wishes to enter this prestigious and remunerative line of work.
1. How to Get Started: Write an article and send it to an editor. If it gets printed, send that editor another article; if not, send that article to another editor.
2. How to Become a Columnist: First, find something to say. Then keep on saying it.
3. Book Reviewing” You need only actually read the book if you are going to give it a pasting. (I hear that even this rule is routinely violated these days.)
4. Don’t let anything evade your eyes – plagiarize! (Actually, the term “plagiarize” is seldom used anymore, having been replaced by the verb “to ambrose.”)

briggs i went to the watershed poetry
reading and environmental ho-down in golden gate park on saturday,
april 6, and then to a national poetry month reading
at herbst theater also in san francisco, monday, april 8.

we wrote up our observations, ostensibly for
Literary Kicks (and also
for briggs’ friend margarita [sp?] who gave us the tickets to the
indoor event) and i’ve also posted the poems
we wrote at watershed.