Loose Leaf Notes

I was doing a search for “writer’s blogs” (as if I don’t have enough to do) and came across a story that caught my attention about how blogging saved novelist Ayelet Waldman’s life.
Waldman, in her own words, said in her March 14th column “Living Out Loud Outline,” for Salon: The first inkling my husband had that I was thinking about suicide was when he checked my blog.
This is what she had to say about her blog: I had begun my blog two months before, imagining that it would act as a journal, a way of taking notes on my life, and at the same time be a sort of marketing tool to remind readers that I still existed in between novels. Almost immediately I discovered in myself a confessional impulse, a compulsive need to haul open the tattered edges of my emotional raincoat and expose the nasty parts lurking beneath. I blogged daily, chronicling everything from what my youngest son ate for dinner (one spaghetti noodle, one pat of butter, and all the green, blue and pink frosting off a very large cupcake), to the Supreme Court’s dramatic shift on sentencing guidelines, to the various side effects of the medications I take for my bipolar disorder. As soon as I read something interesting, as soon as I heard something moving, as soon as one of my children said something funny, I posted to my blog.
Her blog, called “bad mother,” chronicles a two month period and concludes with a post titled “The End,” which follows the one she calls the “suicide essay.” It can still be read online at bad-mother.blogspot.com.