I’m going to speak on a panel tonight at NYU. I went to school there and I can’t set foot in Washington Square Park without hearing almost any song from Blood on the Tracks, remembering where I met my first boyfriend,  the classrooms that overlooked the park, the teacher droning on about Them by Joyce Carol Oates, the the skies that went from white to green, and the back of the neck of a young man I fancied, pebbled and red. I remember filling notebooks I would never read again. Eating sunflower seeds. Making love or dreaming about it in the library carrel while I wound my way through the Canterbury Tales and nursed a crush on a man named Rasam. Once, I read Group Portrait with Lady instead of Portrait of  a Lady. Ha ha ha! And I still passed the test.  I was so lonely in college.  I spent a lot of time alone. I wrote a million poem fragments in appreciation of my pain.

What did you write in college?

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Dear Betsy:

My question concerns blogs written by writers. When are these blogs a good idea, and when are they not?  Because you work in the publishing industry, I’m wondering how they’re perceived there.  I also wonder what kinds of things agents and editors wish writers would not do in their blogs.   –Name Withheld

Dear Wondering:

First came the wave of book contracts based on blogs, perhaps the most famous being Julie and Julia, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, and Stuff White People Like. A blog is a great way to develop a voice, and to find an audience. My sense is that the best blogs have a real focus. So writing about writing generally is probably less interesting than writing about first novels, or rejection, or writers and fondue. When you submit a book to an agent/editor, you will probably include your website or blog link — or the agent will probably Google you if he or she is interested. You want that site or blog to look great, even if you don’t have a ton of content or a following. You want it to look like you have a web presence. I essentially started my blog to convince my publisher that I wasn’t dead yet, to convince them to let me do a revision of Forest for the Tree. Mission accomplished.

What do you all think out there — what’s the up or downside of all this blogging? Has it helped your cause?

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Three hot paperbacks for summer. A fast paced thriller set in the ugly world of Manhattan real estate from Edgar nominee, Justin Peacock; a heartbreaking WWI story about brothers and survival by the author of A Long Retreat, Andrew Krivak; and an exotic tale of travel over five continents and fifteen years by Elisabeth Eaves, the author of Bare.

“Reading Blind Man’s Alley is a life experience to be savored and returned to, and Justin Peacock a brilliant novelist to watch.”–John Lescroat

“The Sojourn is a fiercely wrought novel, populated by characters who lead harsh, even brutal lives, which Krivak renders with impressive restraint, devoid of embellishment or sentimentality. ”  Leah Hager Cohen

 “Eaves conveys the nomadic romance of an adventurous soul traversing the vivid world and yet retains the intimacy of a voice confiding its secrets, taking you with her, smuggling you along…there”ll be no place else you’d rather be.”  –James Wolcott

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 I was all set to get back on the horse this morning, but I find myself doing laundry, grappling with IRS bill from 2008, writing checks, examining pinky toe, considering something violent. My head feels like an overripe melon. I’ve spilled my decaf twice in the same place. Even the dog doesn’t want to play with me. My jaw is a vice. Stepping on the scale would be suicidal. Does it matter that I did three deals this week. That the hopes and dreams of three writers have been wound like a fat gold watch swinging through the night skies. Why did I wear those shoes? Why did I cut my own hair? How can I sit by the side of the road and wait for an email that never comes? Can I find the thread, does it already exist like a silver hair, or  glistening spittle? Where was I when my father died? Did he hear me sing Winchester Cathedral? My baby left town.

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Why do I get so grossed out when writers talk about their craft, their process, or worst of all: their art. In part, it sounds phoney to me, as if you could qualify, quantify, codify how you work. You’re a lucky bastard if you’re any good at all and that’s all you need to know. Do we really give a shit if you write long hand or on a computer, or god forbid a Olivetti 400. These aren’t cars. I also think that writing is completely mysterious; you never know when the hell you’re going to make a break-through or when the words will dry up and float away like new year’s paper. My process is I smear shit on the walls and watch it dry. My process is I jerk off then I write. Sometimes twice. I take Haldol and Immodium and compose. I starve myself for three days. I talk to my dogs. I do a full body groom. Who cares how many drafts you wrote as if writing more drafts makes you better, when, in fact, it might mean  you’ve still got your training wheels on. Who cares if you shifted from first to third. Who’s on first? Who cares if you cut half your pages. Double down! I’d rather look inside your sock drawer, your medicine cabinet, your bank account. I’d like to see the condiments you keep. Then I might have a clue about how you write.

What about you?

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I completely forgot about the “Ask Betsy” part of the blog. It goes to a separate email account, which I checked tonight. There were a ton of emails, mostly for penis enlargement and Viagra, which is handy because I need both desperately. There were two blasts from my past. And if you know anything about my past, that is generally not welcome. There were lots of questions not worth posting because we’ve been over them a zillion times: Is it okay to make multiple submissions? YES. What if my agent stops returning my calls and email? MOVE ON. Do I have to finish my novel before I submit it? YES. Do I need an agent? PROBS. Should I Tweet? IF YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO.

Then there was this:

So I was just reading your blog and came across the series on fame. You said you don’t receive many emails from people just saying they love your book and not wanting anything in return. So. I LOVE YOUR BOOK. I WANT NOTHING IN RETURN. I remember buying it before one of my night classes a few years ago and then reading it in my car while eating a burrito. I devoured it. Loved it. Just like the burrito. I pull quotes from it to use in my Creative Writing class. Now I read your blog and love it, forget about it for a while, and then come back to it and love it again. I think it’s wrong when you say you don’t write poetry anymore because every entry reads like poetry. 

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Okay, it’s no secret, I’m in free fall. If you’re looking for a little inspiration, click the hell out of here. I’m going through the motions of my life but I am lost. Though I only showed my screenplay to one person, it became completely clear that I had swung wide and missed. The feedback for the screenplay and the tv pilot are basically the same: drop the drama and push the comedy. In grad school, I tried some humor in some of my poems and Richard Howard asked me if I wanted to be the Fran Liebowitz of the poetry world. I’d rather be the Chris Rock, but whatever. The stars are organizing themselves in a constellation and it looks like Groucho Marx. Why do I resist the Borscht Belt in my DNA? Why do I want to write about the drain and its inexorable pull downward? Why do I wet myself watching America’s Funniest Home Videos? Why do I want to write about men and their scratchy balls, about betrayals small and large, and hurts and misfirings, and pettiness writ large. Why does death cling so dearly? Why can’t I keep it light?

Identity crisis or pity party?

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Spent a few days in Ann Arbor to help raise money for Dave Eggers 826 volunteer tutoring organization. Given my crush on The Eggman, I had to say yes. I gave two talks, signed some books, did a q&a and had Mojitos with some of the staff and writers, including our own beloved Sherry Stanfa-Stanley. It was good to know that a) commenters are real people and not a figment of my overactive imagination, and b) SSS is a great person. Seriously great.

When I was in LA last month, I went to a talk Eggers gave at the LA TImes Book Festival. He was extremely self-deprecating about his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.  At the Q&A, a young man stepped to the mic. He said he loved the memoir, that it had influenced him deeply. His question for Eggers: Am I a fool? I suddenly understood in a flash something I never fully understood  about self-deprecation. It’s insulting. If someone loves you or your work, they don’t want you to take it away by belittling it. For me, in my life, realizations have never resulted in actual change. I mean I chip away.

So, what do you like about this piece of shit blog?

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Okay, so not only am I not pulling down bank, I had to pay $10.81 for internet access tonight from the fabulous Doubletree to post what might be the most explosive blog ever ripped from the annals of agenting. So I’m walking my dog this morning and I run into a vague acquaintance who stops to chat, and leads with: so are books dead? Friends, remember, I was walking my dog. I had a plastic bag filled with warm shit. In other words, I was armed and dangerous. Are books dead? Bernard Malamud said book will be dead when the penis is dead.

Am I paraphrasing? I saw three people reading on Kindles on the subway today. I was desperate to know what they were reading, so I got over my shy-on and asked. One was reading Tolstoy, one reading Chekov, and one reading Dusty. What is the likelihood of that???  Tonight, I taught a class at Hunter and one of the attendees said she was reading my book Kindle. That gave me wood; c’est vrai. I am, again, not myself. THe other night, a commenter said that someone must have taught me to hate myself. Love, it was a master class.  And the thing is, it’s boring. I’m tired of it, it’s a default position, the air that I breathe. On the other hand, I’m so damn good at it.  Also, closed a sweet deal today. Not dead yet.

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