Note from Anastasia: "Mortified" is being made into a book and will by published by Simon Spotlight Entertainment in fall of '06.

Anastasia and I went to see Mortified on Saturday night in San Francisco and heard people in their 20s and 30s read from their childhood and adolescent diaries. Indeed much of it was mortifying, as a guy read his horny commentary about a girl he lusted over, a girl relayed the behind the scenes drama of 4-H Club cotton judging, and twin sisters sang their tune about the Challenger explosion.

Throughout it all I was reminded of my own obsession with diary writing, which I started doing at age 8. In college I even wrote a paper about my adolescent diaries for a psychology class, analyzing how my writing about friendship over the years reflected different developmental changes. I think that writing can be a powerful thing, allowing teens to vent frustrations and talk about fears to a non judgmental sounding board. Personally, I tended to write in my diary when I was upset or grappling with some sort of issue and I found that it was therapeutic in helping me figure things out.

For my college thesis I wanted to continue my exploration of teen journal writing, so I designed a project where junior high school kids kept journals for me. I was amazed by their candor and by the major issues they brought up without prompting. I heard from teens that they loved the fact that they could write whatever they wanted and no one would know who they were. I'm sure this is some of the same allure that the online world and blogs hold for teens today. You can voice your opinion and remain anonymous if one wants to. Yet, even more powerfully, blogs can also allow for positive feedback from others, which can help teens feel validated. The flipside, of course, is that public blogs can also lead to criticism and ridicule. As I watched the adults reading from their diaries on Saturday I wondered if I could do that. Would I really want to air my private journal entries in public? Even though it's decades later, there's still some fear about being judged and made fun of. Especially since journal entries were meant to be private and the teen years are so fraught with heavy emotion to begin with. What do you think? Would you put your teen angst on display? I'm on the fence as some of my teen diary entries are pretty amusing (well, when you cut out the real names and the embarrassing parts!):

Dec. 2, 1979

Dear Diary, Junior-High is really super! So far we've had 2 dances, and at the second one (a Sadie's) I slow-danced with a guy in my Math class and Spanish class (he's a total babe). He dances so fine! His name is Mike…But I'm afraid he's gonna go 'round with Sandra (a girl in my Spanish class)…This whole year I sat across from him in Spanish, but our teacher is going to put us in A,B,C order Monday. Mike and Sandra's last names both begin with H…Well, wish me luck!"

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