Yesterday, I gave an informational interview to a young man in search of employment in the publishing industry. I didn’t really want to take the time, but then I reflected on my own post graduate days when I idiotically bought cream paper to type my cover letters on and could not find cream White-out. I was a horrible typist, which also explains why I didn’t get any publishing jobs at that time, but worse I spent those hot summer days desperately trying not to make mistakes on my portable two-tone Smith-Corona, lest I have to retype the letter all over again. To Whom It May Concern. For Whom the Bell Tolls. All of which explains how I became the Corporate File Coordinator for two years in the Morgan Stanley Library, where I learned to retrieve documents from the SEC, print documents off microfiche, file documents in dossiers, shag bicycle messengers in the supply closet, buy joints on 10th Avenue and eat two Chipwiches for lunch, from different vendors, so no one would suspect. So when the young man asks me what my usual day like a literary agent is like, well, it’s mind blowing.

What was your first job?

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Today, on the down staircase, I was behind a young man whose t-shirt said, “Love your haters. They are your biggest fans.” Which means I am my biggest fan because I am my biggest hater. Go me! Do you think that your haters are your biggest fans because hating takes so much energy, impressive energy. I know I’m totally enthralled with the people I hate. I probably think about them more than the people I love. I hate myself for saying that.  My mother once told me not to waste my energy hating. That it hurts me more than it hurts them. Yes! Yes! Hating and self-loathing meet like the two rivers that flow into an estuary. And I hate myself for saying estuary.

What do you hate?

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Spent most of my vacation writing. The morning shift. The Osprey shift. The gradual light on the green lawn. I have to admit that I never really got in the zone. I felt rushed and agitated. I had two brainstorms then I promptly forgot them, like the realization you’re always just about to make in therapy, only then it wobbles on the edge of consciousness. I have a fantasy about writers who work full time on their writing that is horse shit. There is nothing pure or privileged or all hail the queen. You have to get to the green. You have to sink it. It’s not up to anyone else.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

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The eternal battle: creative work v. life, mini-golf, grilled swordfish, a walk below a rusted train track, a young boy running with a fish as if all the world was caught between his two small hands. Mother in the hospital saying go home which means stay just a little longer. Lady in the next bed screaming abuse, constipation, never sick a day in her life, now in my life with her emoji eyes, her knees bulbous like an old mare. This contract, that headache, internet down, my own constipation a metaphor for what. My own hospital bed. My own head.

How do you clear the decks?

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Going on vacation. Plan to write my ass off. Like carpal, back pain, skin decimation, self loathing/love, seven day sweat pants, and couldn’t be happier. Being alone writing is the sandbox, mesmerized by the sand slipping through your hands, the fine dust lit by the sun. My idea of fun is begging the monitor for a simile. Oh, I love similes, the more knitted in the better. For all this yakking, I’ll probably choke. Not write a word worth saving. Why does talking about a project seem to sap it of its essential oils?

Are you superstitious about writing?

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In an interview with Anne Tyler in the NYT the other day, she inadvertently left a comment on my blog! In answer to how long can you go without writing, she said: What happens is six months go by after I finish a book and I start to go out of my mind. I have no hobbies, I don’t garden, I hate travel. The impetus is not inspiration, jut a feeling that I better do this.

I love this comment because I don’t believe in inspiration. I believe in compulsion, obsession, loneliness, intensity, fear, desire, ambition, revenge and confusion.

What about you?

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What is summer vacation to a writer? Not a trick question. It’s more time to write. It’s more time to not bathe, more time to stand at the sink eating a sandwich, more time to jerk off, more time to count the headlights on the highway, more time to scrub the tub, to wake up early and stay up all night. You might buy a pack of Marlboro Lights and who could fault you. You might give up on you hair and who could fault you. You might destroy a toe. It’s been known to happen. You do not take vacations even when you take vacation. The world is a sore you need to poke, an engine to tinker. You are nothing, you are everything, this is the sun over Idaho, the clouds in San Marcos, you never picked a fight except right here.

Got any plans?

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I’m stepping up to the altar and committing to a new project. I thought I wasn’t ready, had trepidation, tried to get people close to me to talk me out of it. They just rolled their eyes. Honestly, how long can you circle the ring, can you watch the electricity snap the wire? How long can you pretend that you’re just tired, burned out, oh the misery, beloved misery. I remember walking up the aisle, my parents by my side, me a step ahead. I was in a hurry to marry my destiny. My husband once said, “you can’t second guess things that haven’t happened.” It sounded good.

How long can you go without writing?

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This week I got a call from an acquaintance I hadn’t seen in a few years. This can only mean one thing. She has a manuscript or someone she knows has a manuscript. I can barely bring myself to return the call.  I can already hear myself explaining how I don’t handle fiction, or not taking on new clients for the foreseeable future, or blinded myself accidentally on a fireplace poker, or threw myself down a flight of cement stairs, or stepped in front of the M5. Turns out she didn’t have a manuscript at all.

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I just finished a million page book about one of my favorite poets, Robert Lowell. I’ve read his collected prose, his letters with Elizabeth Bishop, his poems, and yet it came as a horrible shock when I read about his final months, weeks, and his last day. I was a senior in high school when I bought my first collection of his poems, “Day by Day.” I had no idea who he was. I was attracted to the cover and I opened the book to a poem called “For Sheridan.” Thus began a lifelong love of Robert Lowell.

The poem starts:

We only live between/ before we are and what we were

And ends:

Past fifty, we learn with a surprise and a sense

of suicidal absolution

that what we intended and failed

could never have happened —

and must be done better.

What was going on in my seventeen year old mind?

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