I know a lot of writers who say they've been writing as long as they can remember being able to hold a pencil. There are those that say they've been keeping a journal since they got their first diary, the kind with the lock and key that you'd hide and eventually end up losing. Well, I wanted to be one of those girls. I wanted to keep a journal. I imagined that's where I'd collect all sorts of deep thoughts. But you know what? Every journal I ever started lasted about three days before I said forget it. Writing for myself was boring. I already knew what happened and how the story ended, and writing just to listen to myself, well, I could think the same things in my head and it didn't require knowing how to spell.

In college I kept a journal for all of two weeks. It was my junior year and all sorts of tumultuous things were going on with my boyfriend. But at the same time I was having, shall we say, a wild streak with a ton of fun in a sort of reaction to all that was going on. So the situation was heartbreaking and a blast at the same time. I found the journal the other day and, oh my god, the girl who wrote that was a nut case. I could only laugh through my mortification. If she only knew one day she'd giggle at the drama. Still, she did some things that were so crazy, I'm glad she got them out of her system when she was 21 when the prospect of going to jail, apparently, wasn't so much of a concern.

I'm still not a journaler. I'd rather write for other people. But so much of what I write has actually happened to me, my books are a journal of sorts. Or maybe I'm just too lazy to imagine things and it's so easy just to use real life. In any case, were you a journaler? Have you ever gone back and read some of your entries? Did you cringe? And do you use your real life in your books like me?