This was me on Friday:

The funny thing is, in a way, making the video did help. Talking about it helped. Tweeting about it, and venting about it to friends on livejournal and facebook helped. Making my pain public, sharing it with other writers and people who care about me and are rooting for me, helped. Hearing about how other people dealt with the same, or a similar, problem helped.

There’s a lot of pressure, I think, on the writerly blog-o-verse, to keep up appearances–that one is untouchable, impervious, unstoppable. How often do we talk about the depths of sadness and fear we face in submitting our work for public consumption? No, we hardly ever want to risk looking like the sad-sack-of-writer-who-cannot-cope-with-rejection.

I’m posting this because I hope it helps someone else. I know that every time I see that sort of glimmer of honesty and pain, it helps me through my own painful times in writing. It helps remind me that I’m not alone. Have you ever seen the rejection letter Ursula Le Guin got for Left Hand of Darkness? Now it looks like a curiosity. The fact that she can share it with us now shows that she made it to the other side.

I’ll make it there, too, I’m sure.

On a lighter note, have you entered my book contest? Do so by midnight EST for fame and fortune and a copy of a book I really didn’t like!

This is the first time a book trailer has ever given me (heh) shivers.

I would warn you that this entry is about periods, but that would go against the spirit of the thing, wouldn’t it?

So Kotex seems to be going in a different direction with their advertising. Namely, they want us all to start talking about menstruation and vaginas instead of using veiled, metaphoric language. I’m so there!

It took me years to figure out the Dreaded Tampon. To be fair, this wasn’t my mom’s fault–she offered to show me how to use one, but, at twelve, and stupid, I was mortified by the idea. It was mostly the applicators that confused me, though I didn’t realize this until I had tampon success with an OB when I was eighteen.

I used tampons (and, a few times, Instead Cups, which kind of sucked) through college. In graduate school, I switched to sea sponges, because I was tired of spending money on tampons. A few months ago, I finally invested in some lunapads and a DivaCup. And I love love love them. I am, in fact, wearing my DivaCup right this very minute.

One thing I wish someone had taught me when I was younger is that it’s an awesome idea to only wear black underwear while you’re on your period–in fact, I have about half a dozen pairs just for that purpose. Maybe that should have been self-evident, but it wasn’t!

What do you wish you had known about periods?