Loyalty to the family is tyranny to the self. I’m sure I’ve quoted this line before. It’s my motto, I have it tattooed across my back, I fly a banner with those words over Jones Beach every summer, I say it every time I’m about to cross a family threshold or look in the fridge. It was spoken by Ninette T. Loos Blanc, an extraordinary woman in her 90’s who I used to bring groceries to on her fifth floor walk up apartment. I was a depressed college sophomore. Her overheated apartment had few belongings, a magnifier, a mirror, a fish bowl with opaque water. It smelled like old slippers. My friend Raymond used to brush her long white hair. It was like silk and I always think fondly of those words around holiday time. I am still that college sophomore climbing those steps, filled with dread and inchoate rage against my parents. They’re gone now. I miss them, of course.

What did your parents give you?

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I know I can be, um, blunt and off putting, but I want to talk about depression and how much it affects writers and how we are going into the dark months. As I’ve shared here, I’m bi-polar and thankfully have been stable since 1996 which means I’m up for my silver equilibrium anniversary. I don’t take this for granted. I’m vigilant about my medication and seeing my doctor and getting my blood drawn. I was probably in therapy for 20 of those 25 years. I have never forgotten those years in my teens and twenties with shame and loss and and terror. The thing about depression (and mania) is the belief that will never end. It does end. Medication (though it may take some time to find the right ones and doses) works. Therapy helps. I kept diaries throughout my hospitalizations and they all say one thing, in essence, which is I do want to live just not like this. Oh, and I had a crush on another patient named Kyle.

Please beloved community of freaks and geeks, take care. This is going to be a hard winter. What’s your strategy? What are you working on?

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I just watched this documentary about artists and actors, and they ALL agreed that what’s most meaningful to them about their work is the PROCESS. Process, shmocess. I’m sorry but I don’t give a fuck if you get up at 5.am. or write all night. I don’t care if you put on a bow tie or sit in urine-soaked sweats. I don’t care if you read poetry first to “prime the pump” or if you can’t read anyone else’s work while you’re writing except Jonathan Swift lest you pollute your vision. Notebook, legal pad, computer, I don’t care if you write the sentences on the roof of your mouth. I don’t want to watch you eat, I don’t want to watch you masturbate, I don’t want to see your grocery list, I don’t care about your dog and how some of your best thoughts come while you’re stacking the dishwasher. Don’t tell me about your dreams, ever. I don’t care how you thought you were writing one thing when you started and now it’s something else! I’m more interested in how a magician turns a coin into a woman sawed in half than how a poem, burp, became a short story that, burp, meant to be a novel. What am I interested in? RESULTS.

Will I burn in hell?

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Let’s write the fuck out of this year. I mean balls to the wall. Lunch money! Pirate teeth! Bone marrow! The eastern chipmunk! The unfurled flag! I want to eat my pages. I want to go viral, I want to direct, I want to lose myself in a holy transference. When I go out to pick up my paper at 5:00a.m., the world is dark and quiet. The leaves scrape like my dad’s razor. Every day at exactly the same time, a man walks by swinging a blue flashlight to mark the way. Sometimes I wish he would take me away.

What the fuck is wrong with us?

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I came of age during the Watergate era. The journalists were the heroes. Politicians were gross. I adopted an air of apathy toward government, which made it easy not learn anything or try to change anything. Look how well that turned out. So today as I consume my 14th Diet Orange Crush and channel surf, I’ve been thinking about the writer’s responsibility. What do we owe ourselves, our readers, and the larger world. Are we under any obligation to be part of the literary community? Give back? And if so, what does that look like. Honestly, I’ve always liked the part of being a writer where you got to stay in your hole and watch the shoes and hems shuffle by.

How are we going to write about this day?

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