A guy from Amazon came to our agency to talk  about (shark music) electronic books. Turns out he used to be a buyer at B&N. And before that he was  (shark music) an agent. A little swag would have gone a long way, some free tote bags, mugs, Kindles. Just saying.  Did you all know that you can electronically publish your book like right now by clicking here? And did you know that will get 70% of your earnings. How you get readers is another issue, and one we can talk about. But for the moment just take it in: your novel could be published and available for sale to anyone who can down load before the current episode of  Law and Order is over.

They (shark music), Amazon, have some other pretty interesting programs they’re working on for e-books. I have to admit, I felt like packing a suitcase and polishing up my resume. But then I remembered the mandatory drug testing and figured I should stay put. Then the guy said he missed agenting, or was I dreaming that part? In any case, I realized that a lot has happened in the last three weeks since I rode on the back of that motorbike in Paris, but among the amazing things was realizing that I have this ringside seat to watching intensely creative people paint themselves in corners and box their way out. And how much I love my clients (yes, you too, even after that shit fit yesterday). Okay, enough. I’m starting to sound like I give a shit.

If you had one question for Jeff Bezos, what would it be?

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I’m posting from the train from my blackberry so please forgive the even greater number of errors. I saw my psychopharmacologist today. I see him every four months for a tune up. He’s French. I’ve been going to him for a hundred years. He knows how I am just from looking at me.

I feel this way about some of my writers. It was easier when there was no email and we were forced to talk. I could usually tell by the way they said hello when they answered the phone if they were productive, stuck, depressed, manic, suspicious, blazed, or loaded for bear (whatever the fuck that means). It’s more difficult to tell how someone is on email, easier to hide. Silences are also tricky. I don’t like it when I haven’t heard from a client in too many months. I often make a mental note to call but then the day goes to the squeaky wheels.

I’m starving. I talked to students at City College tonight. So cool. I’m missing Glee re-run. It was worth it. Big day tomorrow. Five meetings starting with breakfast with the new editor in chief of Hyperion.

What meds are you on?

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This post is about living with writers. Can’t live with them, can’t get them to pay attention to you. Sometimes, my husband and I will hear someone say something and recognize that it’s a perfect line of dialogue, and  one  of us will say, “I call it,” like children fighting over the last piece of french toast.

Sometimes it’s really difficult to create the mental solitude in a house where another bear sleeps. Sure, you can tap at dawn, tap at midnight, but the books are creaking in their shelves. Teeth are aching as if from cold. The old man is pouring. Where do you hide?

Are writers the neediest sheep in the pasture, or are they self-sufficient? Where do you hide your notebooks. I only read them that one time, before we married, when I needed to know. Okay, maybe I read them again, but you never said anything about me. It was galling.

Why do writers fall for each other when they both know it’s an act?

Did I ever tell you about the time I was in Mississippi in a bar and Barry Hannah was there, quite intoxicated, waving a hunny around, asking if anyone wanted to fuck a real writer.

Dearest Darling Anyone who is reading, tell me, have you ever fucked a real writer, dated one, lived with one, god help you, married one?  Or, to put it another way, what’s it like living with you?

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My favorite part of any reading is the q&a that follows, just as my favorite part of most museum visits is the gift shop. And last night was no different. First, that awful anxiety when the crowd is asked: do you have any questions. No hands. No questions? People all squirmy. Finally, a hand goes up in the front row. Phew. A young man begins by professing his love for this author’s work, then he talks about his own generation of writers and what they have learned from her. Finally, the question comes: is there a young artist or writer who you feel carries your torch?

The writer shoves her hands deep in her jeans pockets. Well, she says, I’m not exactly ready to give up my torch. The audience laughs. Innocence and experience. I remember an author of probably six books tell me that he felt the next generation of writers breathing down his neck, nipping at his heels. He tells me how, when he was young, he typed on a makeshift desk next to the boiler in his cramped basement just to get away from the babies and noise. How over the hours he spent typing he would strip down to underwear, but how he kept writing. Those were the days!

The writer urged the young man to find his own torch. Anxiety. Influence. She said they could share her torch. I guess what I’m thinking about is: how much do you feel the so called next generation usurping you, how much does ambition fuel your writing, is it a young man’s game, how much do you love your influences or need to kill them?

Are you the young man who sticks his hand in the air first, the middle aged woman who asks a question but needs to speak up for anyone to hear her, or are you like me, a million questions burning in my head, silent torch.

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I’ve been doing a bunch of interviews for Forest for the Trees 2.O. I’ve been “upbeat.” I don’t even recognize myself. That’s an exaggeration. I recognize some part of myself, the part of myself that has been a cheerleader for writers for 25 years. But who is she?

There are days when I can’t even begin to fathom how people get dressed, one foot in their underpants, then the other. When the sight of an adult lunch box could make me weep. I watch a woman on the train apply a full face of make-up. I have complete contempt for her but I can’t stop watching. What are we, Cleopatra? Do you ever think how fun it is to drive? Do you ever think that writing can have you? Can you believe some people wear uniforms? Badges! Do I need to tweet? Am I on Facebook? How many hits do you get on your blog? How many hits do you get on your fucking blog? I’ll fuck you up. I’ll fuck you up. So much has changed in ten years. Consider this: blah blah blah. When do I find time to write? When do I find time to pick my face? When do I find time to read one poem over and over and never get it? And never want to. Briefcases are so sad. Buckles. Rubbers. An inscription in a book you buy in a second-hand store.

What have you lost?

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I went to Blue State today, a local coffee swillery, to get some reading done. It was packed and I shared a table with a young man who kindly gestured for me to sit when he noticed my stunned where-am-I-going-to-sit-in-the-cafeteria look. Just a page into my manuscript, he asked me if I was reading a manuscript. Yes. Then, politely, he asked if I would tell him what I was writing. I explained that I worked with writers, that the manuscript belonged to a client. He wanted to know what it was about. I told him. I started reading again. He returned to highlighting his own notes in a wide, unlined notebook.

May I disturb you again, he asked. Is there any other purpose to reading beyond  information or entertainment? I think so, I said. Such as, he asked.  Consolation, identification, understanding, I said, for communicating.  Do think there’s anything wrong with playing hundreds of hours of video games, he asked. I said I wasn’t sure. Pinball was my game freshman year. But that’s just reflexes,  he said, these games are whole worlds, and then he said something about an avatar. I thought he was a lonely freshman, but it turns out he was a lonely first year architecture student from Canada.

I remember spending hours in cafes when I was an undergraduate. I don’ think I ever spoke to anyone. I didn’t need to, armed with my notebook, Rimbaud, and Marlboro Lights. What about you? Cafe time? And, just for the hell of it, where do you stand on Starbucks?  We’ve known each other long enough; I want to know what you drink, if you drink, and if you ever wrote anything at a Starbucks worth reading. I’m extremely happy they didn’t exist when I needed to brood full-time.

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I am what I am

Yesterday, I was at the gym reading about Kelsey Grammer’s divorce from his wife of 14 years. Kelsey, according to his ex-Camille, was going to New York to prepare for his role in La Cage Aux Folles (a production I saw!?!). She wanted to go with him, but he begged off explaining that the rehearsal schedule would be arduous, he’d never see her or the kids. Okay, she stayed in LA. Of course, you know where this is going. He embarks on a new relationship. (Yes, a flight attendant but so fucking what.) Camille finds out from a friend. And this is where my heart nearly stopped and not from my exertion on the tread mill. She called him to ask if it were true. She begged him to give their relationship another chance. She wept. What about the kids, the years together. According to her account he replied thus: Grow up.

When my husband worked for a major trade publisher, he asked for a raise and was denied. Then, he was offered a job by another publisher, nearly doubling his salary. When he went back to his employer with the news of the offer, she immediately matched it. He asked her where the money was just weeks ago when he wanted a raise. She said, Grow up.

What does it really mean, grow up? Does it mean stop pretending you don’t get what is happening? Does it mean I am far superior to you, child. Does it mean give up your foolish dreams? Does it cut to the chase? Or destroy it? What the fuck am I writing about? I realize I could apply those two words to about ten situations I’m in right now and I would feel chastened because all the angst and misery that pretends to be cloaked in some kind of confusion is bullshit. Grow Up!

Two questions: what the fuck is this post about?  Second: is there anyone you would like to tell to grow up and why (apart from me because this, after all,  is my sandbox).

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Janet Reid’s got a great contest running on her fantastic  blog and the winner gets, yes you guessed it, a copy of the revised and updated FOREST FOR THE TREES. You can’t win if you don’t play. Have a great weekend, Betsy

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My husband sold his first novel last month. When we were just out of college, we’d meet on Friday nights, go for dinner at the Second Avenue Deli, go to the St. Marks Poetry Workshop, and then spend hours at the Cloisters Cafe talking poetry, love, life. I smoked Marlboro Lights. He smoked Parliaments. We didn’t become romantically involved until much later, but we cemented a friendship that was fueled in part by a belief in the other as a writer. Neither of us chose the path of a writer’s life. We’ve both worked full time in publishing for more than 25 years and have done all our writing on weekends, nights, or pre-dawn. When we had our daughter, we spelled each other for long weekend days so the other could write. We understood the desire to be alone. It’s more than a desire. It’s a necessity, an imperative.

How much time do you spend alone, need to spend alone? Is there someone in your life you believes in you as a writer? How are we all going to find the boat and row home?

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How are you supposed to behave when a good friend becomes a famous writer? When she invites you to a reading and you feel the urge to rush out the moment she heads back to her seat, but you can’t figure out how to exit? What are you supposed to do, wave at her across the room as you lope outside for air?

I don’t love her stories or novels, mind you, but to be fair I can only read them with one eye open. We’d known each other since college and sent long letters at Christmas for 25 years after that, full of funny, self-deprecating descriptions of our lives. And we always remembered each others’  birthdays. Then she stopped responding to my cards, so I stopped sending them. Was it her rejection or her success that turned my feelings of friendship to schadenfreude?

I seethed in jealousy. I swam in it. I lost hours on the Internet reading fawning praise of her talent, brightening at the occasional blunt criticism.

What, I wonder, has it been like to have the huge advances and the fat royalty checks, the prize money and the invitations to speak at packed auditoriums? Surely her intention wasn’t to torture me and make me feel invisible, but she has managed to do that nonetheless.

She and I shared an apartment in New York for a year after college. For her birthday that year, her parents gave her two tickets to the ballet, and she invited me. We watched an exhilarating performance: the magic of Baryshnikov from fourth-row seats. Leaving Lincoln Center for the subway, we got separated in the throng, and I arrived on the platform just in time to see the subway doors close with my friend inside. We stared at each other for a moment in mute shock, then I watched her move away from me, slowly at first, then faster and farther, until no one would have been able to tell we’d started out together.

How do you manage to nurture, quell, or otherwise live with your envy and schadenfreude when someone you know catapults to literary stardom?

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