I never have ideas. I have a character, a line, a situation. I don’t really even know what an idea is or what it looks like or how it talks. For me, it’s the wheel on a grocery cart that wobbles. That’s what gets me started.  That is the pebble in my shoe. The fine crust of mantle in my nostril. You have five new ideas for a screenplay!  You have an idea for a new novel. Mazel tov! For me an idea is: let’s get ice cream from Bill’s, or let’s go to the mall. I’ve never had a Eureka moment. If you sink a few putts in life, you should be happy. Whenever a writer says he started with an idea, excuse yourself to make a phone call, get  a drink or powder your nose.

Virginia, where do ideas come from?

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We’ve never talked about this before. Not once. So let’s rip the roof of the fucker. I want to talk about bank. Money. Moola. Mool. Coin. Benjis, Clams. Pigs in Blankets. Soda cans. How much do you make as a writer. Nothing? Are you in debt? Are you scraping by? Rolling in it? I think Samuel Johnson said only a fool writes for anything but money. I know so many writers who do it for very little or no money. There is nothing better than being paid for your writing, though having readers and being loved isn’t bad. When I was a new agent, I sold two novels at the same time. I thought one was really commercial and it got a small advance. The other I thought was very literary and it got a huge advance. To this day, I don’t get it. It’s not mysterious, it’s mystifying and logic- busting.

Do you write for money?

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I had lunch with a young editor a little while ago and she brought me the first book she had edited. (Editors almost always bring along a book that they edited at these lunches.) But this was her first and I could see how proud and excited she was. The jacket was gorgeous and she told me all about how she acquired it and the work she did on it with the author and how marvelous the author was to work with. I felt myself time traveling back to my early days as an editor. When bringing a book into the world felt miraculous. When anything could happen and as luck would have some of my first acquisitions took off. A front page NYT review, a million dollar movie deal, a National Book Award nomination, a best seller! It’s not that I don’t get excited now. I do. I do. I swear I do. But I’m old  now and the battlefield is littered with bodies. I’ve been doing this for 32 years.  The young editor had brown hair that shined like a mahogany table and at least half of it fell from her ponytail.

How long have you been at it?

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I went to a talk a few years ago by a Yale screenwriter/alumnus. He was handsome in that LA/Ivy league way. Was he wearing plaid pants? Maybe, maybe not. Did he drive a Mustang convertible? Who the hell knows. He rocked a side part and had gorgeous tanned fingers with nails that looked buffed. He was talking about his career and how for years he worked on one script and carried it around with him like a security blanket. Finally, he got an agent and his agent got him a meeting with Spielberg. He meets him and Spielberg goes, “the script tis terrific, but I can’t make it. What else you got?” Nothing, he had absolutely nothing. I call this the “Spielberg moment.” Most of us typers work on one project at a time, but it’s not a bad idea to have some ideas on the back burner. Just in case. I keep a list of ideas and cool titles on my phone. I have at least thirty. All waiting for the watering pail.

What’s on your back burner?

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These days nearly every writer I edit has a petite problem with knowing when to end a paragraph or a chapter. The writers feel the need to cover a really good last line with two or three more, which is like driving three extra nails in the coffin. It’s like wink, wink, nudge, nudge after a joke. Did you get it? Just want to make sure you got it. It’s creepy. It’s like asking someone if they love you or think you’re pretty. Later we can talk about sense of an ending all that heady stuff, but for this moment in time, let’s just say don’t dance on the grave, burying the body is good enough.

Are you guilty?

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How well do you know yourself, and how well do you have to know yourself to be a good writer? Is ignorance new potatoes? Was that champagne nail polish a big mistake? Did you almost run someone over, again? We see you checking yourself out in the subway window, in the brass plate in the elevator, flossing in the car. You disgust me! Yes, I want fast cash. Yes I want the reduced turkey bacon fat. Yes, I want to be sitting in this chair and not the empty one. I used to think you had to know every cell, had be to a student of psychology, anthropology, history, zoology. You had to renounce your parents at least on some level. I’m trying to fix up my 60-something UPS man with a petite redhead. It bears repeating: I have no idea who I am only what I stand for.

How well do you know yourself and how well do you have to know yourself to be a good writer.

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In the last month, three writers have asked me whether or not they should trash what they are working on. Be honest, they say. I can take it. Be brutal. Be brutally honest. I just don’t want to waste my time. What would you do?  I can trash it. Just tell me what to do. What would you do?

This, my friends, is a trick question. This is not a question you should ask of anyone except your self. And the beauty is that even if you try put a work down, it won’t stay down if it’s shit you still need to work out. It may die as a novel and get reborn as a screenplay. It may go to bed as a play and wake up as a poem. It may drive a stake through its heart, or put its head in the oven, but if you keep writing it will find a way to become something if you still have something to say and you are a sick fuck, meaning a writer.

Should you burn your novel. Maybe. Junk that essay, shred your poem. If you’re asking me, sure, torch the whole fucking thing. But keep writing. The better flower has yet bloom.

What’s it going to be?

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Working on a chapter though it feels more like a game of whack-a-mole. Every time I move a section into what feels like the right place, another hole opens up. How many craters can you see on the moon with your naked eye? Back ache, hands ache, dry eye and flatbread pizza. Five hours, nine, twelve. I’m holed up in a hotel in downtown Detroit working and all that’s missing is a pack of Luckys and a pair of nylons drying in the bathroom. I like to see how many hours I can go without speaking to a human being. Five hours, nine, twelve. I like it when I can think of the word.

Where do you write?

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I had the great good fortune to visit Georgia O’Keeffe’s home over the weekend. The first thing I noticed was a wooden ladder resting against the wall lit by a noon sun, then a collection of rocks, then her humble single bed and the mountains beyond. Black cows and white horses in the valley below.  I was aware of the presence of greatness, a singular mind whose life was dedicated to art. No questions asked. Something so undeniable, so all encompassing. What was I thinking in my twenties working on my poems, spreading them out on the floor, pacing and smoking. Did I dream of being poet or was I already divided, in search of a job that would sustain me. O’Keeffe understood that making art would sustain her. Could there ever have been doubt with walls the color of cream, brown floors mixed with the blood of oxen. Standing in her courtyard and kitchen, her studio and storage room, to look at her spices and yogurt machine, it all made me feel full of wonder and longing and awe.

Who inspires you?

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Good news, bad news. Rejection, acceptance. Invited to the party, snubbed. For once they put enough lime in my gin and tonic. For these small things I am grateful. The woman at the bar so vigorously shook the martini canister that I thought I heard the ice rumbling around and felt the coldness near my neck. Red light, green light. Bank account. How much time can you buy to write. Today, on the plane I was surrounded by a family of five. The father attended to all of the children while the mother zoned out watching episodes of Ozark on her device. You made yourself and you can break yourself. Don’t forget it.

Between writing and not writing, where are yon on the spectrum?

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