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There’s something fascinatingly awkward about an author photo. I’m drawn to those glossy shots in the back of books, mostly because the subjects never look all that happy to be there. The authors often resort to clichéd poses, hands on hips, or arms crossed protectively in front of their chests, backs pressed against brick walls in random alleys. Some authors choose the full-body shots—sitting in chairs with their legs crossed, glasses off and in one hand, as if about to correct your latest slip of speech. Their bodies may read confidence, but in their eyes you can see the unnerving fear of having their faces on something they wrote. Forever. It’s full exposure.

Some authors’ faces read apologetic; all raised eyebrows and crooked grins. They’re leaning forward on their elbows, hands under their chins, like this whole thing has been a happy accident. Some authors come across as friendly, familiar. She’d be fun at a karaoke bar. He’d let you borrow his DVDs. I love the photos where they’re laughing, admitting to us they don’t know how the hell they got here either. I used to stare at these pictures, wondering if there’s something universal in what a writer is supposed to be.

The image in my head of a writer is from the summer I was ten years old. I see my father hunched over his electric typewriter, a cigarette burning by his side. He’s muttering a sentence to himself, shaking his head, deciding on the perfect participle. Dad had lost his job that year and we were living off my mom’s desk clerk wages. We had recently moved to Texas, and when Dad couldn’t find any work, he took it as a sign that he was supposed to start his writing career. He probably thought it was more like reviving it, finally putting his English degree to good use.

That’s how this story always goes, right? It begins with unemployment. A string of bad luck drives pen to paper, he churns out a few stories, blah, blah, blah. . . . . . nobody thought it would sell . . . blah, blah . . . Harry Potter.

Our kitchen was littered with sheets of typewriter paper, smudged and half-finished, a single typo rendering the entire page worthless. A well-worn Writer’s Digest was always resting at the foot of Dad’s writing chair; rejection letters piled in a stack underneath his typewriter, a reminder at the end of the day that he should go back to the real world.

I remember watching him pace from typewriter to couch, mulling some story in his head. He was growing Jack Nicholson’s facial hair from The Shining, all the while developing an addiction to daytime game shows. All objects were in danger of becoming ashtrays—breakfast bowls, mugs, bottle caps. I think he was starting to scare my mother. To me he seemed like the coolest guy on earth. He’d walk circles in our living room, his hands folded behind his head, his eyes staring at the ceiling. There he was, walking and thinking. You could just see him thinking like that, deep in his head.

There were all these sounds that would come out of him, by-products of deep, intense thought. My favorite was one he’d use when the word he was searching for started forming in his head: “Yud-da-duh-da-duh-da-duh.” My sister was a fan of the slow, quiet curse word. He’d start with “Sh.” Aware that there were young children present, he’d hold that sound for seconds, flipping through stacks of paper, searching through folders and files. We knew if we waited long enough, our patience would be rewarded with a whispered “-it.” Sometimes he’d exhale this huge puff, like there was never going to be another sentence written on this planet. All the words were taken.

That’s how my father wrote three short stories that summer. One was about our cat getting out, and how guilty he felt for spending an extra minute going back into the house to put on his sneakers instead of running out into the street to find my beloved feline. He sent that story to Cat Fancy, and when they turned it down, Dad threw the rest of the copies into the trash. A story about a poker game went to Playboy, and I remember how ashamed I was that my father had to write smutty short stories to put us through public school.

That was also the summer I wrote my first short story. I got a clunky, old, forty-pound typewriter at a garage sale. I put my pillows on the floor of my closet and taped pieces of paper to the walls, notes that read, “Deadline THURSDAY!” or “LUNCHROOM. IDEA??” I stared at the ceiling. I paced the length of my bedroom. And then I decided to do what every writer does in his or her first attempt at greatness: I ripped off my favorite author. I wrote a two-hundred-word horror story about a limb-eating monster worthy of a cease and desist from Stephen King. Mom thought it was brilliant, because she’s my mom.

But I didn’t want to be a writer; I wanted to be a doctor. Or a lawyer. Something smart that required a Harvard education. Meanwhile, I was writing constantly. In order to stave off boredom, I wrote notes in every class to friends. By the end of junior high, I had memorized over fifteen different origami-inspired ways to fold love notes. On a dare I once wrote a 205-page letter. I filled a Mead notebook in one weekend just to see if I could do it. In high school I wrote a very bad serial comedy detective story that made absolutely no sense. I’d write a chapter at night, and the notebook would be passed around in school the next day. I’d get it back at the end of the day and write more. “You’ve gotta write another chapter,” a complete stranger would say to me, stopping me in the halls between classes. I killed off my main character one month later, a little freaked out by the attention.

I threw away any notion of a retirement fund by deciding late in high school that I wanted to be an actor. My eleventh-grade English teacher encouraged me to keep writing, submitting my essays for contests, while giving me additional writing assignments. He didn’t know I was turning in only a very small fraction of the writing I was doing. I was filling journals with stories and poems, but it was rare to find one not focused on a girl pining over yet another boy.

In college, a directing teacher complimented me on the journal I kept while working on a scene. “I really think you should focus on your writing,” he said. “You have a talent there. It’s tough to be an actor.”

“Thanks,” I said. But all I could think was “You’re saying I’m ugly.”

Along came the Internet and with it a new way to pretend I wasn’t a writer. I’m convinced inspiration comes from someone else’s asinine comment. For me the dumb-assery can be attributed to my boyfriend at the time. When I asked how I could start my own Web site, he smirked, “Um? I don’t think so. The Web’s not for girls.”

I immediately taught myself HTML and started writing online. A few years later, while working in a cubicle, I began writing what used to be called an online journal. Before that it was called an Internet diary. Today people call it a blog. Pamie.com (or “Squishy,” as it was nicknamed) was where I wrote stories about my life—anything from what a stupid thing I did at work to how my cats were feeling about the most recent change in their diet. Friends didn’t understand why I would write about my private life for the world to read. But what they really couldn’t understand was why people were reading it.

Truth be told, I couldn’t either. At the time I was working hard to use my acting degree to its fullest, performing five improv shows a week at the local comedy club in addition to doing the occasional play. I was working tech support for a major computer company. I used my Web site to land a few freelance writing jobs, but as far as I was concerned, I was no more a writer than I was a Web designer. It was something I did for cash while trying to catch an acting break.

I started Pamie.com in order to look as if I was working when I was sitting at my desk trying to avoid working. This was during the glorious dot-com years when most of us were paid right out of college for jobs that didn’t require a full day’s work. We became experts at covert operations: Web surfing, office supply swiping, or (in my case), sending out thousands of electronic words like messages in bottles, hoping someone would hear me and respond.

People soon did, in the form of fan mail. The first piece felt like pure celebrity. A complete stranger had taken the time to write, saying, “I feel the same way” or “You’re hilarious.” I instantly imagined those old post office sacks of mail arriving at my front door, stamped, “Pamie.com. URGENT!” A kid with a heavy sack on his back and a newspaper boy hat: “Special delivery for you, Miss Ribon!” Me in something pink and silky, a long cigarette dangling from between my fingers as I read through the latest from my adoring fans: “Oh, be a dear and throw them with the others, would you?”

I wrote more and more, addicted to the instant feedback, delighted with myself for turning my office computer into a virtual pen-pal machine. By the end of my first year writing online, I had the electronic version of my post office fantasy. I received hundreds of letters a week from people sharing their own stories, asking questions about my private life, requesting to see other things I’d written. I was a secret celebrity, a name known in less than five hundred households. At the time I didn’t know anybody else who was writing online, creating an audience. With no way to measure my success, I had no idea what to do with it.

The online diary community was small back then, and word about a great new journal would travel fast. It took links from only two of the more popular sites to triple my readership. I was asked to join a Web ring (I just made a bunch of old-school Web people tear up with nostalgia). I attended the South by Southwest Interactive conference, the one place outside San Francisco where web people were considered cool, and took notes. I decided to use my site as a way to showcase my writing to maybe make a little money. A friend on the comedy scene was a fan of Pamie.com. He recommended it to his coworkers and helped me land a weekly humor column in the Austin American-Statesman. You know you’ve officially become a celebrity when you get your first fan letter from a prison inmate (“Please send pictures”).

I submitted sample stories from Pamie.com to other sites I admired and found lifelong friends at Über Interactive, a Canadian husband-and-wife team that published several humor sites. When they created TelevisionWithoutPity.com they asked me to be on the staff. I was creating a portfolio of work, writing for Web sites even if they couldn’t afford to pay, trying to create a bio. My query letters were electronic. My Writer’s Digest was Yahoo.

The next summer South by Southwest Interactive asked me to run their panel on Internet diaries. I convinced a girl-centric Web portal to sponsor my site with ad banners. I received awards from the diarist community, including a Legacy award for being a trailblazer: I was a diarist contractually bound to write in her journal. In just two years after starting Pamie.com, I was getting paid to write full time, with jobs I had acquired through my Web site. I was able to save enough money to quit my cubicle job and move to Los Angeles because that’s where actors go.

I was an actor who made a living through writing. I figured it would make me a well-rounded performer, and it certainly gave me the kind of working hours needed for auditions. My Web site audience was encouraging, even coming out to see shows I was in. It was like having a tiny cheering section rooting for me even when I was at my lowest points. No matter what I did, they were still there. I was learning business and computer skills, and every day was another writing lesson. I began to cater the Web site to my readers’ desires, selling merchandise, holding contests, telling stories I knew would appeal to them. The immediacy of the feedback kept me writing constantly. And I learned how to write for an audience, how to write dialogue that was entertaining on the page. Or screen.

Pamie.com now had a thriving life of its own. One night two girls were posting on the site’s bulletin board at the same time. They got into a conversation and realized they were attending the same school. In trying to determine where they lived in the city, they realized they were both living on campus. They looked out their windows and saw each other’s bedrooms from across the quad. They met in the middle of the night at a tree between them. They are best friends today, and I still receive letters from them at holidays.

Inspired by a girl’s e-mail, which told me she was new in town and couldn’t find any cool people to hang out with, I suggested a Pamie.com Cool Kids Meeting, where readers of the site would meet for coffee. The Austin one was so successful it became a monthly gathering, complete with readings from the members’ own journals. The clubs grew, and soon there were gatherings in many major cities. They still happen to this day. Attending a convention comprising people who know an awful lot about my private life is one of the strangest experiences I’ve ever had. But the readers of Pamie.com have always been remarkably nice, fun, intelligent people who share a love of books, music, writing, and pop culture.

Pamie.com was at its most popular, with several thousand daily visitors, when Dad asked me for some help with his writing: “Hey, I was wondering if you could help me get on that World Wide Web.”

I knew he occasionally flipped through my Web site to find out what I was up to. He told me he’d stop reading whenever I mentioned sex or the words Britney Spears.

I was happy to hear that Dad was interested in writing again. It had been a long time since that summer of unemployment, and though Dad tried the occasional writing class, he would always get bogged down in what he called the necessary “research,” and he couldn’t seem to get started telling the story.

“What are you looking to do?” I asked.

“Well, I was reading this article about authors. And it seems that some writers, what they do is they write a chapter or so at a time and post it on their Web site. They post a little more, every day or every week, and people go back to the Web site and read it.”

I remember the silence as I slowly lowered my head to my desk.

“Dad. That’s what I do.”

“No, no,” he said quickly. “I mean real writers. They put up a few hundred words and keep updating their Web sites, and people read what they write.”

How could I consider myself a real writer when I was sometimes paid in candy bars and glitter makeup? I may have built a T-shirt-buying, Internet-ad-clicking, Web-savvy audience with my bare HTML-novice hands, but I wasn’t a real writer. Real writers graduate from Harvard and get invited to those workshops where people quietly bring food to their cabin doors. Writers have their theories discussed in classrooms or New Yorker articles. Writers don’t talk about their periods on the Internet.

When I lost my Web funding in late 2001, I wanted to do something to repay the audience who had given me the encouragement to relocate and follow my dreams. I felt as if I had a responsibility to those who had been reading me for years, teaching me how to be a better writer. A reader who happened to work for Putnam asked if I’d be interested in writing a novel. I started immediately. My friends at TelevisionWithoutPity.com referred me to their agent. My book started as sample chapters and a proposal. There was doubt that people would be interested in a female-driven novel about the Internet so close to the dot-com bust. Then, on October 1, 2001, I lost all of my jobs and had to go on unemployment. Between faxing my résumé to a hundred different places and applying for every job I could find, I fleshed out the rest of my novel based on my experiences at Pamie.com.

While the book was shopping around, Dad said to me, “I want you to know that it’s very hard to sell a novel. You probably won’t sell this, but you’ll learn a lot.”

He didn’t want me to go through what he had gone through. He didn’t want me to read letter after letter saying I wasn’t good enough. I already faced the daily rejection of being an unemployed actor in Los Angeles. Hadn’t I suffered enough?

Dad gently reminded me that these things take time: “You don’t even have an English degree. Just don’t get your hopes up.”

“I know, Dad. It’s OK. I understand.”

We shortened our sentences, making them easier to say to each other.

“Real proud,” he said.

“It’s ’cause of you.”

I wondered how much he remembered the summer he had been a real writer. He didn’t know he had caused a ten-year-old girl to fall in love with his idea of the writing process, mimicking it for hours on the floor of her walk-in closet. He inspired me to start writing at such an early age it became second nature, what I did to pass the time.

He became very sick as I waited to hear if anyone was going to buy the novel. In his hospital room, we had a conversation about regrets. “Sure was looking forward to seeing your name on a book,” he said. “I hate that I’m going to miss that.”

Three months after my father died I sold my first novel. That’s how these stories always go, right?

I find myself stopping sometimes in the little moments to wonder what he’d have to say about my life as a “real” writer. He’d have gotten a kick out of seeing my galleys (and the hilarious mistake of my name misspelled on the spine), tracking the book on Amazon, or watching me read on my first book tour. What would he think of my own writing process? Would he be as in awe of Pamie.com as I am, when I receive letters from young women graduating from college who have read me since they were in high school?

With today’s greater understanding of the Internet and blogs, what I do is no longer confusing to people. I don’t have to dismiss it as a time waster or a way to make spare cash. Instead, I’m proud of having found a different way to become a writer. And though I’m still a performer, these days I tend to perform pieces I’ve written myself. I am lucky enough to be able to spend my days writing. When people ask me how I became I writer, I answer, “I started writing at ten and never stopped.” My secret is I always sought to make my audience larger. The performer in me helped me start a writing career; the Web geek in me took care of the rest.

There are still days when I pace my living room, crumpled paper at my feet, rejection letters tacked to my bulletin board. If I still smoked, there would be overflowing ashtrays. If I could grow a beard, I would have one. But I no longer have the fear that deep down I’m not supposed to be a writer. You don’t get to decide those things. It’s not about having a degree or winning a prestigious award or finding a respected mentor. It doesn’t have to be about chapbooks and literary journals. How it works now is that if you’re writing something someone else is reading, for better or worse, you’re a writer. You just have to decide what you’re going to do about it. Dad would have liked that part of it. Takes the pressure off. It allows you to just write.

In my own author photo, I’m leaning forward, but you can’t see below my shoulders. I’m grinning the same half-smile Dad had whenever he found something ironically amusing. I bet the face in my picture says what every author thinks when he or she holds that first bound copy:

“Amazing who gets to write a book these days. Guess I’m a real writer now.”