Julie Murphy, Julie Desin & Julie Stoddard

Life has been crazy for a very long time, but for now I have some time and will be trying to add more of my writing. I'll slowly be restoring them from my own back ups, though it may take some time. I have missed my friends here at writers cafe and hopefully soon I'll be completely back up and running again.


I'm a writer at heart. Some days I do it for the love of it and some days because I do it because if I don't I feel like I'll die.

My poetry has been copyrighted and/or published under the names: Julie Desin, Julie Stoddard and Julie Murphy. Currently I am writing under the name Julie Murphy.

I'm a 43 year-old mother of two and grandmother of 4. Gay. Pagan. (and according to my family thoroughly confused lol) Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

I write. It's what I do. I have no explanation for why I do it except that maybe it's a release. And maybe I just write because I need to get the words out of my head and into somewhere else, wherever that may be.

If I'm not writing, I'm drawing or painting or doing some other sort of crafty things.. or maybe I'm reading. Daydreams become real somehow when you find a way to make them touchable.

I've never claimed to be a "good" poet or even a mediocre one but poet I am, before almost everything else that defines me as a person.

I welcome reviews, whether they are glowing or constructively criticizing. We all seek to become better at our craft. It is through the eyes of others that we can see better where that improvement may come from. As always we are our own worst critics.

Just a little personal note here: I appall people who write just to see the words on the page. Some days that's me and I hate myself for doing it. Write from your SOUL! Write from whatever driving INSPIRATION you may have! Write from your HEART! Write from your SPIRIT! But for heavens sake if all you're doing is throwing words on a page and hoping they make some sort of sense, STOP and ask yourself what you are doing! Everyone writes at times just to write, but really why are you writing? (and yes, I ask myself every time I sit with pen and ink or at the computer. I also tell myself these things because I do not want to be that which I hate)

"Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer - and if so, why?"
--Bennett Cerf

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." - Red Smith

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become." - Buddha

"I don't pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about." - Arthur C. Clarke



Above is my personal little odd assortment of some of the music that I enjoy. (OMG.. how many songs can I have... this is like...mmm candy.. or something better as it feeds my music addiction) At any given time I might be listening to any of these or any of a million others... I'm a music junkie. There is always music in the background when I'm writing always something that seems to push the muse forward and forth and all that.