<Begin Segment 13>

TI: And so as you're doing this, at what point did you start thinking about getting into writing?

JO: I, it happened very organically. I think I, I continued to paint fairly happily for about a couple years, and then again I started having major, just attack of doubt, and I just suddenly, I just couldn't even put down a mark on the canvas without being sure it was wrong and I'd just become extremely self-critical of myself while I was painting. And one day I just realized I was miserable. And I had started, painting had been a very joyous act for me in the very beginning, but it was like the more I learned, the more I realized that I, the more I realized I had to learn. And I just, I just, I was just, by the end, I just couldn't, I couldn't do it anymore, and I just, so I just stopped. I was twenty-seven when I stopped painting, and it was really like my dream to, to be able to make a good painting, I think. I just couldn't do it, and so I stopped, and I continued, though, to work as a desktop publisher in the evenings, so I had a fairly steady source of income. And then I just began going to my neighborhood cafe. I was just, I was so depressed, I really felt like an utter failure, and I would just, I began going for long walks up and down Broadway in the morning and then in the afternoons, I would just go to my neighborhood cafe and this is when I started to read. I just read fiction and I hadn't read a lot of fiction until then. I just started to read a lot of contemporary fiction and then I would go, around four-thirty I'd just head off to work. And so I did that for about three years, I just read. I was just very depressed and I just felt completely washed up. And that, I think, was how I, I began to become, I just found reading stories to be terribly consoling. It was the one time when I could sort of forget about myself, me and my small life, for a few minutes in the day, just getting absorbed in somebody else's story. So I just, I really liked reading stories.

And then I, I met a guy at the, at the cafe, and he was an ex-Zen monk and he was a writer himself, and we began to date. And I would just write these little short vignettes about him and I'd jot 'em down and he'd just crack up. And I guess they were funny, or he thought they were funny. And so writing for me, actually, it was just something I started to do to amuse my boyfriend at the time, and it was a form of communication, he also wrote. And so it was just sort of a fun thing, very, no stress, no expectations. And then when we broke up, again, I was devastated. I was thirty, and I remember, I really did like to write, and it came to me much more easily than painting did. His best friend was teaching a writing workshop, and so he suggested I sign up for it, and I did, and it was great. So that's sort of how I got into writing. Just, it was, there was not, I didn't decide, "Now, I'm going to stop painting and now I'm a writer." It took years to realize that maybe this was something I wanted to do. But I felt like I had nothing to lose and I didn't think I would end up being a "serious writer," it was just something that I enjoyed, really, in the beginning.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.