A Letter, a Name, and My Writing Journey
How I discovered the power of words.
For many, the journey of a lifetime begins with a single step. For me, it began with a single letter: A (or was it E?).
Even from an early age, I never felt the name “Julie” — the name my parents and grandparents insisted on calling me — suited me. After all, it wasn’t even the name on my birth certificate.
But the diminutive form stuck — or, at least, my family tried to make it stick. That is, until preschool, when I learned to write my name. It was always “Julia” (save for a brief period during the 1976 Summer Olympics when I tried to make it “Nadia”).
Changing just one small letter at the end of my name allowed a tiny wisp of a child like me to take control and change the way adults addressed me. It was empowering. And if one small letter could do this — what power might sentences, paragraphs, and stories have?
I was determined to find out.
In elementary school, I filled the library with miniature carefully lettered, poorly illustrated books on obscure animals, like the pika (not to be confused with the less-exotic Pikachu). Through my handwritten words, I was determined to educate my peers on the bigger world around us.
As I got older, I tried new forms of writing to see what effect they had.
Persuasive letters to the local TV station to keep “Johnny Socko and His Flying Robot” worked. A legitimate sounding but awkwardly written and terribly misspelled letter “from my mother” to get me out of gym class due to “laryngitis” didn’t.
An apparently all-too-convincing essay on how my dog saved our family from a house fire (she didn’t) earned my lazy dog a certificate of heroism from the Humane Society. It was progress, for sure. And I loved every minute.
My writing in high school and college, while no less enthusiastic, garnered not-so-stellar results. I wasn’t selected for the school newspaper. My AP English teacher was less-than-impressed with my writing skills. A “D” in the college English class “New Views of the Old West.”
It was hard to be repeatedly dismissed at something you love and that you know you’re good at. So I kept trying … kept learning. Maybe I just hadn’t found my niche yet.
Graduate school certainly wasn’t it, either, but I was getting closer.
As a reluctant counseling psychology student, I eagerly traded requirements with fellow students. They took my one-on-one counseling appointments in the student counseling center while I begged to take on their mental health and wellness articles for the school newspaper — an exchange that ideally suited my introverted nature and passion for writing. Trying to counsel students in person left me awkward, self-conscious, and fumbling for words.
But writing freed me to confidently be whomever I wanted to be — and I never had to say a single word. My first byline was magical, and I thought I had it all figured out.
But when I entered “the real world,” the words changed yet again.
Following a convoluted career path that never used psychology but instead included proofreading ads and brochures, writing user manuals and help files for the State Department, and ghostwriting corporate blogs on credit card fraud, I found that writing to survive wasn’t always fun.
I had to exchange my father’s signature Pilot Razor Point pen for a keyboard. A wild imagination for Googled research and careful links. Stream of consciousness for strategically placed keywords and strict character limits.
For a while, I woke every morning with a lump in my stomach as I mentally scanned my to-do list, wondering what project was due that day.
I wrote the next of 500-plus corporate bios robotically, as if my fingers weren’t connected to my brain (they certainly weren’t connected to my heart). I second-guessed every word. I agonized over what the reader would think.
I became the teenage me again, worried if I was good enough. If I was smart enough. If people liked me. Stuart Smiley would agree that the answer was (and is) “yes.”
For me, for now, these projects and these feelings are no longer enough.
I miss the old personality of my writing. Finding the moments that matter and feeling the words and ideas just flow.
Writing for someone. To someone.
I think back to one of the last times I felt my writing really mattered. We moved to Brussels in 2006 when my children were just toddlers. I had no friends. No support. I wondered if and how I’d make it.
I started a blog for those closest to me that became a near-daily recount of our dramatically changed lives from half a world away. I wrote it in stolen moments after the kids went to bed, and it was hardly edited for typos, much less content.
It seemed so simple at the time, but looking at it now, I captured the most intimate moments of our kids growing up that would’ve otherwise been lost to time. I documented the moments that mattered.
And when I’m lucky, I can use my voice when others can’t bear to use theirs.
When my father passed away in 2010, I found myself in the air at 36,000 feet, two hours too late to say a goodbye we didn’t know was coming. With nothing but heaven above me and the harsh reality below, I wrote his eulogy in one sitting on my tiny iPhone keyboard.
Despite my preference to stay in the shadows, behind a keyboard, I delivered it just a few days later, virtually unchanged, to a room full of misty eyes and a lost and broken family.
No second-guessing. No doubting. No worrying.
The pieces just fell into place like they knew where they belonged. He had been a writer, and it was one of the first moments where I really felt like finally I was, too.
Yesterday, my father had his red pen. Today, I have my keyboard.
And today, as I watch my daughter Mia politely correct the journalism judges when they call her “Amelia” as she accepts her ribbon in the copywriting UIL competition, I wonder what she’ll use to express herself tomorrow.
As for me, I still have to correct people regularly that my name isn’t Julie, it’s Julia.
Words matter. They hold power. They change lives. I’m going to make sure of it.
Julia Byrd has been a word enthusiast since elementary school, where she “published” handmade reference books for her school library. With over 20 years of writing experience under her belt, she’s been a copyeditor for an international brokerage firm, a tech writer for a government contractor, and an in-house wordsmith for an event planning firm, just to name a few. Nowadays, she’s a college admission essay writing coach. When she’s not helping students, you’ll likely find her on a quest for the world’s best French Dip sandwich or writing for her personal website. Julia’s got a soft spot for the apostrophe, because, in the words of Imagine Dragons, it’s “a symbol to remind you that there’s more to see.”