TOP TEN REASONS TO LIVE WITH A WRITER

1) They make great lovers.

2) They are  great cooks.

3) They can entertain themselves.

4) They like to walk.

5) Ramen.

6) Will play Bananograms.

7) Floss.

8) Amazing library.

9) Bad at sports.

10)  Childlike sense of wonder.

Am I forgetting anything?

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Today is the publication date of my husband’s first novel, The Variations. We met at a pretentious poetry workshop in the West Village where the woman who ran it insisted on calling me Elizabeth instead of my nick name.  Later, John and I spent most Friday nights at the St. Marks Poetry workshop.  I fell in love with him over baked chicken at the Second Avenue Deli before the workshop and over cappuccinos at the Cloister’s Cafe after, specifically when he handed me a poem called “Parts On a Beach,” and I believed I had met the Wallace Stevens of our generation.

Thirty three years later,  many lost notebooks, many lost weekends, my dearest darling has produced a novel  that fulfills all the promise of that young man in corduroy pants with the cuffs stapled, with poems stuffed in his pockets, who played the accordion after we made love. It is a searching story of a priest whose faith is dwindling along with his congregation. It is about the troubled young woman who haunts him (shades of me), and the editor who tries to save him (more shades of me). If you like me, you’re gonna the love this book and the women in it. But mostly, you will fall in love Dom, the all too human, flawed priest at its center. His thwarted quest for faith is exquisite.

In subsequent posts this week, I will write about a) living with a novelist  b) sleeping with writers and c) a guest post from said novelist. For now, sending out big congratulations to my darling.

People always ask me if I edit John. What do you think?

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If I hear one more person say that YA is the hottest category I am going to strangle myself (forget that after I get my script off my hands I’m turning to a YA novel I started a year ago after a publisher contacted me because she loved the blog and wondered if I ever thought of trying to write one. I lied and said I had). And, I confess, I just bought a copy of Hunger Games. I didn’t go near Harry Potter or Twilight, but when I heard that kids killed kids in Hunger Games, I confess I was curious. The YA books of my youth: Go Ask Alice, Flowers for ALgernon, David and Lisa, The Butterfly Revolution, THe Outsiders, Of Mice and Men, In This SIgn, and purloined copies of The Godfather. Now apparently there are hundreds of series about mean girls, rich girls, blonde girls, and undead girls. Go girls!

Do you, as an adult, read YA and what are your favorites. And what were some of your favorites?

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This is where I usually write snarky things about actors and their self-indulgent projects, but this year the Oscars were really tame/much more boring than usual. Plus I didn’t see many of the films. Betsy’s kid, a future Hollywood power player, won our Oscar pool with 10 right answers to my 4, so next year she’ll likely be reporting from this space. Tonight’s red carpet trends: bringing your mom as your date, pale, pale white skin, suntanned white skin, side-sweapt hair and giant buns on the ladies, large foreheads and tuxedos on the men. Did Angie endear herself to you tonight or was she badly in need of some blotting papers? Did anyone read The Descendants in hardcover? Was Melancholia robbed for Best Picture? -Erin Hosier

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It’s Oscar weekend. Usually my favorite night of the year from the first Blahnik  on the red carpet to the last acceptance speech cut short for going over time.  But this year I’m not in the mood. Maybe it’s because they had to borrow a host from the wax museum, or because there isn’t a single piece of bombast that will sweep the night, or maybe it’s because I’m bitter not be nominated for my screenplay  that didn’t get made into a movie. I remember the first time someone I loved broke up with me. I knew I had a vital choice to make: to be bitter or to be happy that I had known great love.

I would like to thank my hand for scratching my ass. I would like to thank my 10th grade English teacher for asking me to touch him inappropriately, thus supplying a decade of disgust. I would like to thank my parents for fucking me up just enough but not ruining me completely. I’d like to thank everyone who ever lied to me, and this means you most of all; great material, babe. I don’t want to thank all the other wankers in the category. I will not assume you like me. I will not thank the Lord. ANd I promise that I will take this vote of confidence and twist it into something debased and degraded. Thank you.

Who are you going to thank?

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There’s a lunch ritual in New York publishing that is elaborate, byzantine, and requires the skill of a master chess player. It’s called the Cancellation and Rescheduling Shuffle and here is how it’s played. First, you must know a real invitation from a lunch gesture. A gesture comes in the form of a business card clipped to a book with a hand scrawled: Lunch? Or a p.s. at the bottom of an email: let’s do lunch. Don’t be fooled; these are not invitations. They are hollow gestures. They are guys who take your number at a bar and never call. By contrast,  the Cancellation and Rescheduling Shuffle (CARS) begins with a bonafide lunch date, which can be cancelled by either party. Pawn to queen four. Some of the excuses might be: sick child, author in from out of town, had the wrong date in my calendar. But the excuse is secondary. Who cares if you have to get a bunion removed, a therapy session, a meeting with your wedding planner. What’s important is that you make a new date with absolutely no intention of keeping it. Pawn to Queen’s Bishop Four. And if you’re skilled you can postpone a lunch date for a year. Check. Which gets you bonus points and the opportunity to convert CARS to a game of  chicken where the person who bails first loses. 

Lunch?

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For me, the whole thing is editing. Yes, I love discovering a mushroom under a rock, yes I love hearing the words, “we would like to make an offer,” yes, going to lunch with handsome young editors who might still change the world is lovely, but it’s the pencil in my hand, turning my mechanical pencil a smidge and writing a note in the margin, or untangling a sentence, or offering a more precise word that I find endlessly satisfying. I love thinking about pacing, tone, and timing. I love taking the back off a watch.

Once when I was a young editor and struggling mightily with a manuscript, my boss stopped in, it was after 7pm. What are you still doing here? I looked up, eraser shavings blanketing my chest, post its stuck to every available surface, pages taped to the door and wall. Editing, I said. He shook his head, “can it possibly be worth it, will it sell a single extra copy?” I’ve asked myself that question a thousand times since. Does this word for that, this structure over that one, sell a single copy more and does a reader appreciate it? Are we just kidding ourselves. Are we just Nippers and Turkey?

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I love these ads for medication where cartoons or puppets go from being slack to sunny. Better are the side effect warnings: extreme high blood sugar, seizures, impaired judgement, stroke, hypertension, shortness of breath, high white blood counts, loss of memory, loss of life. Guess you gotta weigh the odds Pinocchio. May result in loss of fertility, hair loss, extreme rash, or webbed feet. I take four pills a day. I’m told that long term effects are thickening of my heart and weakening of my bones. I fully expect to die of a heart attack while on line at St. Dunkins, my weak bones crumpling beneath me, but my mood will be GREAT. Unless of course I die of anaphylaxis from my nut allergy, my throat closing while my Epipen is in my other purse. I hate when that happens. I’d prefer a literary death: poison, pistols, quill pen. For fuck’s sake I’ve left all these damn diaries. And I’d like a great big funeral where all my writers say great shit and afterwards drink scotch at dive bars with paper coasters.

How about you?

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This post arrives late because I lost the editing on a piece I’d been working on all day. If I could have smashed my head through the monitor to retrieve it I would have. It’s not just the time, it’s that first best energy when you approach a piece of writing. As anyone who has lost work will likely attest, you can recall about 70% of the lost work without much trouble. It’s that other 30% that takes the form of a ghoul and torments you as you stare at a passage for so long you can no longer understand its meaning. The ability to place commas leaves you. And that perfect word you had supplied is just beyond your grasp. Now, four drafts later, I feel the original work has been restored, may be even improved. Would that I were a groom.

Have you ever lost work?

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Inevitability and surprise. You expect something to happen and it catches you off guard at the same time. The ball rolls toward the cup — then drops. The sun lowers in orange gradations — then sinks. Plip. One small detail returns when you least expect it: a letter, a necklace, a peach pit. Timing. Pacing. The gun is introduced in the first act. A stranger comes to town. A glass menagerie. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. How do create the high wire? How are suspense and tension created within a work?  The butterfly nears the net. The sound of sirens. A scoop of ice cream teeters over the edge of a cone. A child steps off a curb. Can you learn to thread your book so that people keep reading, so that even the most subtle moment pools with suspense. Will she say yes? Is that your last breath? What if I get in bed beside you?

How do you create tension?

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