I always felt defective as a poet in that I wasn’t a free spirit. I had a savings account since I was twelve. I pay all my bills in full and on time. I’m punctual. I’m judgmental. I prefer a schedule to spontaneity. I don’t want to stop and smell the flowers, run barefoot through a field, and please don’t your hands over my eyes and tell me you have a surprise. I don’t like to try new things. I don’t like to travel. I’ve never dyed my hair pink, blue or green. No piercings. I keep a miniature pharmacy in my pocketbook.

Are you defective?

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I have been having a lot of lunches with youngsters, and by that I mean people in their late twenties and early thirties. Many with marvelous piercings and tattoos. All with passion for their work, the projects they’ve acquired, just being in the publishing circus. I remember when I was a young editor in my Anne Taylor suits and god knows what kind of sensible shoes. And shells. Shells were big. I had a big Coach tote bag, one of the first things I bought with my first credit card. I loved the shit out of that bag and hung it up many years later like a feed bag on a hook in a horse barn. It was big enough for two full-length manuscripts, wallet, keys, and the like.  And I toted it around so proud to be an editor.

What is your experience with editors?

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Ambiguity is one thing, confusion is another. When do you leave the reader in a state of heightened awareness to the possibilities and when do they turn back a few pages to see if they missed something? While we’re here, how much ambiguity can people take. I find very little. Open ended endings are like…Last night I went to a movie and there were all kinds of hints about who was going to end with whom and how, but when it was all over I didn’t know and I didn’t care. That’s bad. Ambiguity should be delicious, not maddening. The writer must be clear especially about ambiguity, ambivalence, uncertainty, discomfort, sadness, despair, confusion, and love.

Are we clear?

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At every reading, someone always asks what my process is. First, spend your childhood in a state of terror. Become a chameleon in high school and befriend everyone. Latch on to a creative writing or English teacher. College go underground with your poems. Do not work on the college literary magazine, do not go above 14th Street. Check out the poetry slams at the Nyorican but don’t read your ballad, Calories & Other Counts. Apply to Grad School.  Become utterly convinced of your inferiority, though you also spot a few charlatans and people better suited to mental health testing  for profit. Are you depressed? Lose you diaries. Lose your mind or watch it unravel and refuse to give up the seat closest to the tube. Now, I get up at five, coffee, write, break to walk the dog, have a low-fat grilled cheese sandwich with pickles and get back to work.

What’s your process?

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Gave my last Bridge Ladies reading today in Kansas City. Now, I’m stuck in Chicago with a five hour delay and my little red shoes have lost their glitter, the road paved with fool’s gold. I try to be funny, warm, relatable. I try to fly my freak flag but only so high. I try to connect. It’s a funny business being a whore-clown. Usually my mom comes to my readings and we’re a good duo. People love to meet her. And she’s funny, too. Lands her lines like a tennis pro returning a soft lob. In the car, we bicker. It’s the same conversation that never says what it hopes to say. Today, I was a one man band blathering on as I do about mothers and daughters and silver polish. I want to thank everyone who came out and asked a question or bought a book or recommended it to a friend. Or who couldn’t wait to get home and fire up a Lean Cuisine.

Thank you so much.

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I wish I had become a literary agent in the sixth grade, then I would have been better prepared to face all the romantic rejection the world dished out. When I first became an agent, every rejection letter from an editor was an assault on my senses. I literally felt like my kids were not getting into college. Like we were going to wander the earth in an apron or too many bobby pins. Rejection is useful, nasty, necessary, unhelpful, instructive, demoralizing, but ultimately a test of the emergency broadcasting system. It is a high pitched sound that you must tune out lest it drive you crazy. A smaller voice, a tea bag, the way your fingers float about the keys. Stay right where you are. Don’t stop writing whatever you do.

How do you keep going in the face of the world’s indifference and your own shit?

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Six weeks away: rehab? India? face lift? depression? I’m so sorry I didn’t say goodbye, I had no idea I would be gone.  How the fuck have you all been? My life is roadkill and raven all at once. Yes,  you can pick yourself to death. Yes, you can fly into the windshield of a car flying by the highway. Yes, your black wings might span the length of a bridge and someone, years later, may find the nest. Rehab, India, face lift depression.

Where have you been, old friends?

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How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Structure, structure, structure. What is structure? How does it work? Do you figure it out before you write, or does it emerge as the storytelling takes shape. As an editor, I always felt that the structure suggested itself after 75 pages or so. By then all the major decisions have most likely been made: point of view, tense, passage of time. My boss believed you needed a blueprint before you set out, like an architect. That was always too uptight for me. The thing about structure is it has to be there, but not show.

How do you do it?

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Sometimes when you’re talking with a writer and you give feedback that a particular scene doesn’t work, the writer will say, in his or her defense, but that’s how it happened! To me, that’s like when you make a joke and nobody laughs, and you say: you had to be there!  We weren’t there. It’s your job to put us there. Please don’t tell me that’s how it happened. No one gives a shit how it happened. More to the point, how something happened has little to do with how well you render it on the page.  You have to find the words, phrases, nuances, descriptions. The tone, telling details, restrained alliteration, etc. to create the illusion. You are a puppeteer, a conductor, a director, a show maker. Please don’t tell me how it happened. I beg you.

Do you feel me.

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This is going to be pet peeve week (and just fyi, the term “pet peeve” is a pet peeve). What drives me nuts is when fiction writers use eye signaling to stand in for story or emotion. She looked at him, she glared, she glanced, she stared, she lowered her eyes, she batted her eyes, she looked away, she looked beyond him, she looked right through him, she smiled with her eyes (how the fuck, but never mind), she looked around, she looked down, she closed her eyes, she half-closed her eyes, she blinked, she rapidly blinked, she saw right through him, she looked inside him. Her eyes surveyed the room. Her eyes met his. She furtively looked. She locked eyes. She saw the world as if through a silver platter.

Can you add to the list?

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