Over the last few weeks I’ve had lunch dates with a really great group of editors from all walks of the publishing spectrum. Young and hungry, eager to prove themselves. Fat and sassy with an impressive roster of writers including bestsellers. Grand and commanding with bittersweet memories of better days. The literary ingenue, well connected, moving as easily through social networking as a Paris Review party.
It’s a strangely intimate quasi-blind date when you meet a new editor or reconnect with someone you haven’t seen in years. You hope for points of common interest, you hope for dish, insight into the house they work for. You discern as much as you can about how the person does their job, cares for their authors, how much juice they have. You wonder what they make of you, what they think as they walk away back to their office.
Usually I pick up a Coke Zero on the way back to my office to get me through the rest of the day. Have you tried the Zero? It’s like carbonated cough syrup and reminds me of my junky days.
What is your editor like, or what is your fantasy editor like?
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What do you do when you’re sick of your own fucking voice? This blog is seriously getting on my nerves. And foul language is not going to give me the kick I’m looking for. So fuck that shit. I don’t know. I’m in Tangiers. My boots are caked with salt. I am rubbing a Colonial grave with a piece of coal. A waiter confuses me for a man. The night is patent leather. The day is gorgeous and I can’t take it. Three pieces of chocolate. Two satin ribbons as fat and wide as your tongue. You are this, then this, then this. A movie so bad you had to watch. Are those new glasses? Is your panic attack better than my panic attack? You sound like an asshole. Shhhh. Static. Was that the fax machine? The heat through my house could raise the dead.
Sometimes I think writing and getting published are part of the same continuum, that within the very act of writing is the desire to be published, that we are always hoping to be heard. Other times I think that the two are very separate gestures. And that writing is an end unto itself and can be a deeply satisfying private act. I often talk here about the agony of writing, of being a writer. But tonight, sleepless as she is, I wonder if I’ve got it backwards. Isn’t writing the ecstasy? Publishing the agony? The promise of a lonely night, the comfort of a small island out of season? Is there anything more perfect than a composition notebook and a worn in pencil? The lost thread? The beginning, again? You are here.
I’m teaching a 
I had lunch with an editor today who asked me what I get out my blog. Ask not what your country can do for you. What do I get out of my blog? Lots of tickets to movie screenings. Suitors. Bracelets. Vajazzle kit. New clients. Hate mail. I get invitations to dinner parties, cocktail parties, birthday parties and book parties. I get duck eggs delivered to my door. What do I get out of my blog? June, July, August. I get phoney phone calls and parlor games. I get to feel the heat of ten thousand wings beating. The smooth underside of dog’s belly. I get a horse and carriage. What do I get out of my blog?
Editing is still the love of my life. It’s like working on a 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. You start with the border. You follow the patterns, each piece locks into the next. Crappy simile aspiring to be a metaphor. Drew Barrymore on Colbert. She is so completely adorable. What the fuck is she wearing? I think I’m winding down, guys. The tank is empty. Ha ha. My business partner calls me The Tank, and I see myself rolling across the desert, squashing a gila monster. I think I have to go back to reading before I go to sleep instead of tap dancing. My husband is quietly snoring, a Geoff Dyer book splayed open on his chest. I will take it off and mark his page, turn out the light.
When I finished teaching and got on the plane to come home, I fell into a deep sleep. On the drive home various moments from the day sifted back to me. The woman in a white sweater taking copious notes. The young man behind orange tinted glasses with a strange story about a ghost. The man in blue denim shirt in the front row who never spoke. The woman with black hair and a distinctive part and nose earring, whose questions were sharp and pointed, and I nicknamed her Dragon Tattoo.
First of all, I’m in Texas so all bets are off. Tomorrow, I crush the hopes and dreams of some forty graduate students and creative writers. And who said being an agent isn’t fun? Plus, I’m writing from a room that could double as Gertrude’s bedroom for the wine-colored drapes that hang from ceiling to floor and whose folds doubtless harbor a murderer.
Betsy Lerner 