Writers in the summer not pretty. We are indoor people. We are lumpy or bony with bad hair. We are not poolside, oceanside, hikers, bikers, or amusement park riders. We are bad houseguests, self-absorbed and antsy to get home. Brunch brunch brunch brunch. I fucking hate it. I don’t want to pick berries. I don’t want pale ale. I don’t like chicken thighs. I hate summer because I don’t know how relax.

What’s your summer?

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Do you ever have one of those days when you mistake your life for a short story? When every detail is telling, every person a character, every snippet of conversation a witty quip? Do you see yourself leaving the deli after flirting with the counter man? Do you see the gumsplat and grit in the sidewalk as a constellation of stars. Is that you saying hey to Pat, the weather, the weekend, the holiday. Are those the trains pulling in or pulling out? Did a stranger leave or come to town? Are the best days ahead or behind? Do not look at yourself in a mirror.

What am I talking about?

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In the middle of a big editing job: erasure shavings everywhere, post it notes creeping up my ass, hunting and pecking for transitions, new structure shaky like the legs of a doe. Looking for the heart of the thing, the lungs and liver. I fucking love this work. It’s just me and the page. Face to face. Man to man. Thirty years of a muscle. I truly believe where there is great writing a book of great beauty can emerge no matter the struggle . I loved being an editor. Was proud to tell a stranger on a train what I done for a living. Now, I’m that thing with eight legs but I still have my blue pencil. Still have a trick or two.

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I’ve been reading David Sedaris’ diaries, Theft by Finding. Reading a writer’s diary is something of a guilty pleasure, like being invited into his apartment and rifling through the medicine chest, not that I would ever do that. Sedaris is so brilliant at the telling details that it isn’t surprising to find the diary filled with them, with hilarious dialogue, with life’s indignities and absurdities. What I find so moving in reading the entries is feeling how essential they were in the formation of the writer. Not just because they supply material — that’s the least of it. Every single diary entry no matter how ordinary or extraordinary reveals the Sedaris mind at work, like looking into the gears of a beautiful clock. You understand how writing is living.

Do you keep a diary?

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