I just got a bump-up:ByJane is now listed on Blogher’s site. I don’t think I felt more excited when I got my first reporting job! This blog has become and is becoming more for me than just a place to rant and read. When I first started By Jane, I wasn’t sure what it would be. I knew I didn’t want it to turn into a boring whinefest or a catalogue of chores accomplished or not. I thought it would be a central place where my friends could tune in and I wouldn’t have to write umpteen emails. Turns out, my friends weren’t interested. I wasn’t sure if it was me or them, but then I read in The Weblog Handbook that Rebecca Blood had the same fantasy: “When I began my weblog, I imagined that my friends would be relieved to be free of the endless stream of email containing links I thought were interesting. ‘Now you can come look at my weblog whenever you want to,’ I told them, ‘and see it all at your convenience!’ It took me a week to realize that they weren’t reading my weblog at all (97)’”. That cheered me up considerably.

What I find really difficult in writing this is being dead honest. I never realized how much fear was behind my lack of writing productivity. Or I realized it, but didn’t have a place to deal with it. When I was a working journalist, deadlines squelched the critic[S] in my head. I needed the paycheck so I had to throw on the page whatever stuck. When I left journalism for the nirvana of Creative Writing, the jig was up. I have written reams, but almost nothing is finished. I’ve spent months on projects that are sitting in my files. There is always a point in the project when I find a reason to abandon it. And trust me, I’m creative, so those reasons were good!

It is only here, confronting this blank screen that I can see how much making a committment to even an idea put forth in public scares the shit out of me. And if it scares me, that must be a good thing–right? I heard Reese Witherspoon say that in an interview last night, and it seems to me that I’ve heard other people who have achieved stuff and accomplished something they’re proud of say the same thing. So By Jane is a place where I’ll work on scaring myself.

Boo!

Okay, that was really stupid, but whatever….