Today, I’m having breakfast with one of my best friends in publishing. I had just started at a new publishing house and from the moment I walked in, I felt I had made a mistake. I had come from a very literary house and this place was all about the foil embossed jackets. As I walked up and down the halls, editors were busy on the phones, etc. I felt like the girl with the tray at the fifth grade cafeteria. Then, tucked around a corner beyond editorial row, I saw a door covered in jacket proofs — each one more alluring than the next, for their wit, for their elegance, for their snap, crackle and pop. I was determined to befriend the editor within. He was determined to keep away. I have that effect on people. Eventually, I wore him down, and for a time I believed we were evil twins.

Then I left my career as an editor and as all partings go, it was unclear who I would remain friends with, who would drift away. Was the bond dependent on working for the same oppressors? Was it geographically determined? Would there be a perfunctory post-departure lunch and then…nothing? Today is my friend’s birthday. We’ve known each other for fifteen years. He still kills me. Happy Birthday, dude.

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Weekend reading report:

Dysfunctional family memoir – pass

Abused farm animals – pass

Hooker mother-in-law – pass

Multi-generational saga – pass

Client’s second novel –  Ten huge steps forward from first book which was great.  Thrilling when that happens. Some writers seem to write the same book over and over, so watching a writer spread her wings is hugely exciting and encouraging for a long-term career.

Two revised chapters from new client –  Better than I had hoped for. Again, swoon. So many writers say that they are taking your edits, but many return with a slightly altered manuscript. When someone figures out a way to take your notes and go beyond your expectations, then the whole process gets energized.

Weekend Movie Report:

A Serious Man: Kafka meets Woody Allen by way of the Coen Brothers. I have always wanted to be a Coen brother.  Please see this movie, esp if you’re from a shtetl, as I am.

Weekend Shopping Report:

Went to buy a computer with the huge pay day I got for my revision. (I’m a firm believer in only buying new computer equipment with money you make from writing.) Couldn’t decide. The kid who helped me had the most profound case of chapped lips.

Two packages of Printworks Multipurpose 750 sheets of printer paper from Target. I still can’t read on screen (so if you were thinking of getting me a Nook for Xmas, I’m afraid it’s back to the drawing board).

Ugg moccasins. (A treat I gave myself for a ginormous sale this week. I know, quite the come down from my Prada’s but so comfy.) I call them my Fuck Me Mocs.

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Susan Klebold, mother of Dylan Klebold, speaks out for the first time since her son perpetrated one of the worst school shootings (with Eric Harris) and then took his own life ten years ago. I read the piece because I worked with Dave Cullen, author of Columbine, for a decade and was deeply involved in the story. After I read the piece, published in O Magazine, I put my head down on my kitchen table and wept. Her words of despair about the loss of her son and the guilt over the lives he took is rendered with tremendous clarity and honesty. I could not stop crying. In the end she talks about suicide, how it can be prevented, how she hopes her piece will help others see what she didn’t see. It’s not a neat ending. It’s just an ending.

I realized today  that I never quite took it all in. Yes, there were always vivid moments, many of them, that Dave wrote about that were horrifying and heartbreaking no matter how many drafts I read. His efforts to understand the boys were nothing short of heroic. But for me, I was working on a manuscript with a writer, I was thinking about structure, tone, and transitions. When I talked about the people in the book I often referred to them as characters and thought about how to keep track of such a huge cast, how to keep readers from losing track. I thought about pacing. That is my job. That’s what I help writers do. And I think I’m guided by a deep feeling of empathy for people as much as by my desire help writers fully realize their creative work. But right now none of that seems like much.

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CAN YOU MATCH THE FIRST LINES WITH THE WRITERS? The first person to successfully match all the lines to their authors will win something. It’s probably some free books because, as you may know, I’m no longer giving away my “vintage” Forest for the Trees pencils with the erasers as hard as witches’ tits. But it could be something else. Depends who wins. Extra credit if you can name all the novels, too.

• This morning I got a note from my aunt asking me to come for lunch.
• This was the year he rode the subway to the ends of the city, two hundred miles of track.
• In accordance with the law the death sentence was announced to Cincinnatus C. in a whisper.
• My name is Ruth.
• Two mountain chains traverse the republic roughly from north to south, forming between them a number of valleys and plateaus.
• The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance agent promised to fly from Mercy to the other side of Lake Superior at three o’clock.
• In the Oakland Greyhound all the people were dwarfs, and they pushed and shoved to get on the bus, even cutting in ahead of the two nuns, who were there first.

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Every morning on my commuter train, a woman with a full head of  bright-white hair gets on the train in Stratford and greets everyone in the five-seater where she always sits. I can hear her booming Boston accent from my end of the car; she holds court for the remaining 1 1/2 hours of my nearly two hour ride. I call her Phil.

I’ve gathered the following from six years of commuting: Phil is a rabid Red Sox fan though she “respects” Derek Jeter (thanks, Derek appreciates that). She loves Ess-a-Bagel. She has a gaggle of grandchildren (“happy to see em’, happy to see ’em go”), her garage is full of nothing but junk, she’s never dyed her hair, she can’t believe how rude people can be, and her husband is a “bum.”

For six years, I’ve worked up a pretty healthy hate-on for her. After all (and this is where the publishing part comes in), I’m trying to read manuscripts, maybe even some of yours, and it’s really hard to concentrate when the Mayor of Stratford gets on the train and starts shaking hands and kissing babies.

I Miss Phil!

If you’re wondering why I don’t find another seat, you have not yet truly appreciated the magic that is me. I would sooner put my Papermate Sharpwriter #2 through my right eye than move.  But here’s the part I don’t understand about myself: yesterday, when we pulled into Stratford and Phil didn’t show, I actually looked up and kind of missed her. I was like, where’s Phil? Today, she’s back. In fact, she broke out the camel hair Pashmina and cowboy boots. And she’s spearheading another fasincating conversation about Daylight Savings Time and, gosh, it’s getting darker earlier. Ever notice that?

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I was going to write about syntax tonight, but given the OUTPOURING of responses to my  call for a vampire book, I thought I would provide some guidelines as to what exactly I’m looking for. I think some of you are really on to something. I especially like the one about the string quartet where the second violinist is  a vampire (who would suspect the SECOND violinist?). It’s genius! I also think the one set in an orthodox Jewish community has promise, where the vampire doubles as a towel attendant at the mikvah. (Is it just me, or does this have Whoopi Goldberg written all over it?)

Now, once you have your “concept,”  you need to write a “narrative” that will a) make me puke the way I did when I mixed 7&7’s with screwdrivers and hurled all over a seedy “disco in the round”  on a ski trip in Quebec;  b) make me wish I was dead like the time Rita DiNoozio sent fiery streams of toilet paper into my bathroom stall because I was Jewish; and  c) write the equivalent of the “first living abortion” which is what my older sister lovingly called me when we were growing up on Walton’s Mountain.

If you can do all this, you will be my next client and we will change the course of history together. I was even thinking of slashing my commish, but fuck that.

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I’m not going to temple today. It’s not that I haven’t done anything wrong this past year, or even that I’m not sorry for those things, I just  don’t see why I should die by asphyxiation from the collective smell of expensive pancake make-up favored by the women of the congregation or suffer through another internet sermon.

 Then there’s the book. Not the Torah. Food and Loathing, my darling memoir in which I write about our congregation and say some not altogther kind things about some people (and yes I am sorry for that, though not enough at the time to have stayed my hand). I’m not exactly Philip Roth, but  it’s uncomfortable especially when people ask, the accusation rich in their voices, are you writing another book? Sure, a sequel, Son of Food and Loathing,  Food and Loathing: Attack from Mars!   Food and Loathing Las Vegas!

What can I say. May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life. And send our love to those who’ve fled.

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