Everyone is a writer. Forget your promised 15 minutes of fame -- that is so yesterday. Now everybody writes, everybody blogs. Welcome to the great tapped creativity of America. Everyone wants you to read their blog. "Did you see my blog?" Everyone craves your comments on their blog. "Whacha think?"

And yet I have trouble writing a few sentences that will be read by precious few. Precious few who will think to themselves, "Wow. I used to try to encourage Tamara to write .... what was I thinking? Didn't she used to have talent?"

Long answer: probably not. I used to think I did though. Writing was used to save me from a physically abusive childhood -- I would author poems and cartoons and short stories and was never short on material. My grandmother lovingly encouraged me -- I would make up stories as we lay in bed on a summer's night and were drifting off to sleep.

I loved the feel of a pen gliding over paper, the nib permanently creating ink-filled impressions on the sheet. Words I was writing, stories I was telling -- to myself.

I want to go back in time to when being a writer was something special. When it took effort to pick up pen and paper and begin to scribble away. It wasn't as easy as having a computer at your fingertips, typing out emails all day long. One had to go out of one's way to secure writing instrument and writing reciplicant (I made up a word -- enjoy it). As I keep reading blog after blog the one thing I have noticed is that each and every one of those authors is entirely capable. The reading is enjoyable, interesting. (Unlike this) (Typical Tamara dig at herself)

I am completely intimidated by all the other bloggers out there. Be they 10, 50 or 20. I love reading what they have written but I am getting tired of writing, "That's great!" I don't know what else to say -- I don't know how else to express my appreciation. I want to be able to push MY writing while I compliment theirs. But I am scared. I don't want to come off as uncool or unhip. I want them to marvel at the wittiness I possess. Or at least I used to posses when Ken Crosby and I were drinking Hollywood under the table in the late '80's.

Among other things, Ken was a great audience -- when he would let me have the stage. That was before we were a couple, when we were just best friends. And he was in awe of me. Before I became his girlfriend and he discovered how easy I was to push around. Then all we did was fight. Our gregarious friendship had not foreshadowed this darkness, this sadness. We limped along for 4 1/2 years before I left him -- and a somewhat magical history -- for good.

My time has passed. And so I bow to the new blood, this invisible competition. It has stifled my voice. It feels like a stranger. Choppy and foreign.

Writing used to be very special to me, it used to be precious. It was my escape before alcohol, before sex, before sleep. I want to fall back into its timelessness and agelessness. I want to exist not in the world but between worlds. In that imagination I lived in as a young girl.

However, one thing is stopping me. And it is every kid with a keyboard, every person with a url.

They are ganging right up on me. And they have no idea. Nor could they care less. I am just one struggling soul in Hollywood trying to recapture her story. Before in final breath it leaves me. Just as alone as when I started.