Look who came down the chimney for the penultimate guest post: our very own prince of darkness, quiet of late, but back in fine form  to spread some of that special love that only August knows how to serve up piping hot and with a side of bile. Enjoy!

What if we’re not that good?

What if that’s the problem? Maybe there’s nothing wrong with our query letters. Maybe our blog stats are great. Maybe our structure is passable and our dialogue works—but we’re still not good enough.

Maybe that’s why self-publishing starts making sense. Maybe that’s why we’ve bookmarked lists of rejection letters for famous novels—Cold Mountain, The Help, The Liar’s Club. Maybe that’s why agents tell us ‘lovely, but.’ Maybe that’s why editors don’t offer us $3,000 for a year of our lives: they offer nothing. Zero. Worthless.

And what if there’s no fixing that?

Do we improve as writers, after we hit our stride? Is The Plot Against America better than Portnoy’s Complaint? I think I’m getting better editorially—I see problems more clearly now—but as a writer, I’ve hit my peak. And my peak is apparently second-rate thrillers and LEGO tie-in novels.

That’s my question, this holiday season. What if you’re not good enough? Most of us aren’t. What if you’re not an exception to the rule? What if you’re nothing special? What if quiet desperation is the best you can shoot for

Prove me wrong.

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In 1991, as a newly minted editor  at Houghton Mifflin in my Ann Taylor suits, pearls and pumps, I acquired my first book of short stories, Naked to the Waist,  by a writer with the most alluring name, Alice Elliott Dark. The collection was followed by In the Gloaming, the title  story of which would be included in John Updike’s Best Short Stories  of the Century, and then the novel, Think of England. In addition to her brilliant writing, Alice is a beloved teacher, and she is antithetical to everything I believe to be true about writers. In other words, she’s caring, kind, and believes people can grow. Here’s her guest post:

I teach in an MFA program, which is for writers what waitressing is for actresses. (Yes, I insist on sticking to the woman version of these words.) It’s that job that seems a perfect complement to the central task of writing but is actually all consuming. I have learned over the years that it is fruitless to work on a novel during the semester; I cannot keep it all in my head, and I begin to doubt it. That’s when the trouble starts.

This semester I wrote a novella by not writing my novel. I wrote a story. I wrote a bunch of poems. I focused so intently on not writing my novel that I wrote lots of other stuff. I went to my office at the uni at seven-thirty and wrote for a few hours before anyone else rolled in. Ha! A simple plan, yet it worked. Kind of like giving up processed foods.

As soon as I finish grading exams, I will have three weeks. THREE WEEKS. This calls for a master plan—and I do have one. Here it is, step by step.

1) I wrote very detailed lists of everything I have to do before next semester begins, and how long it is going to take to do each task. I hung them on the bulletin board in my office and will next look at them on January 15^th.

2) I made an agreement with my writing coach to work on two things and two things only during this time, three hours per day each.

3) I agreed to do yoga before I begin each writing sesh, and breathing exercises.

4) Instead of watching TV at night, I am going to read the books I will be teaching next semester. This is obviously the hardest commitment.

5) No Facebook. Or just a little Facebook.

6) Keep Aristotle’s Poetics at my elbow.

7) Plan the days around the blocks of writing time.

8) Go work at my office when my son is home.

9) No computer until I have a clean draft in pencil.

10) Focus on what I am not writing, so I can write. That seems to work.

How will I survive the actual friends n’ family moments? Work them into the other 18 hours of the day.

So, the question: what’s your plan?

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Please welcome  our resident flaneur and bon vivant, author the forthcoming illustrated travel memoir, Le Road Trip, our own VIVIAN SWIFT in tonight’s guest posted series, “How A Writer Survives the Holiday.”

How this writer gets through the holidays.

After 20 years of writing hundreds of freelance magazine articles and two travel memoirs, I got my first full-time writer job this year. Regular hours, regular paycheck, full medical benefits, all in return for about 1200 PR words a day. I’m the only writer in an office of 110 people. I sit in a cubicle in the Collections dept. because there isn’t anyplace else to put me. It’s a noisy department. People are on the phone all day, or they are venting very personal feelings about zits and cold sores and the latest outrage in the office (somebody stole the Toys for Tots box right out of the lobby last week). Or they are watching You Tube videos while making bird calls. Really. There’s this one guy who makes piercing bird calls to goose the unsuspecting ladies in the department. It’s his “thing”, making the ladies giggle, like his thing of threatening his debtors with the info that he’s a very important person who almost knows Donald Trump personally.

I’m a professional writer. You might think I’m slumming it, sitting in the Collections Dept. with a guy who impersonates a screech owl all day, but I actually have it pretty good. I’ve seen the non-existent Help Wanted ads for Writers. I’ve seen the sales figures for my non-vampire/no dead dogs book. I’ve seen the going rates for what they call a magazine these days. Oh yes, I’m a writer who has “made it”.

Which is why Betsy has asked me to write about how I, Professional Writer, gets through the holidays.

I drink. I drink almost anything, as long as it’s a vodka tonic and not beer or martinis. I never developed a taste for beer because I spent the first 30 years of my life trying my hardest to be French and beer just didn’t fit in with my ambitions to be mistaken for a Parisienne, even when I worked in a beer factory in the suburbs of Philadelphia. However, I did develop a huge appetite for martinis. Enormous. I love gin. Don’t get me started.

But I discovered, in 2003, that gin was not good for my writing. I gave up martinis so I could finally write that book I’d been meaning to write for about ten years.

Giving up gin worked. I wrote my book. So I don’t go near martinis anymore.

I’ve recently finished my second book, to be published in 2012. To get that book done, I had to give up my daily blog. I only post on Fridays now.

I want to write a third book, but I’m having trouble managing my time what with my new, spectacular Professional Writing career going so strong. So this holiday season, as I pound down my restorative Saturday night vodka tonic, I am asking myself, “What can I give up in 2012 so I can get that next book written?”

Those two episodes of Judge Judy at 10 each night? My lunch hour nap? That cute guy from Occupy Wall Street?

Betsy always ends her posts with a question, so my question is, What’s the worth of your book as measured by what you had to sacrifice to get it written? What part of your life did you have to get rid of to make room for the Muse?

Yeah. That’s right. I called it the Muse.

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Best

I’m tired of being dysphoric, anhedonic, pessimistic and generally irritable. This last week before the vacation break I want to have a little fun. Fun? Not something I’ve put a tremendous premium on in my life.  Well fuck that. I’m in the holiday spirit and by that I mean I’m going to completely isolate. Yes! For the last week on the blog before the holiday break, we’re going to be treated to some guest posts, one more contest for a holiday book basket, and just lots of buttery love all around.

For now, I want to kick off the week by inviting everyone to contribute to the biggest, baddest  list of 2011 Worst and Best . So please add your contributions, literary and otherwise. To kick it off:

BEST: Andrew Krivak’s novel THE SOJOURN nominated for the National Book Award.

WORST: Amazon rebating $5 to people who bought books from them after using an app to compare prices of books in indie stores with their own.

What’s your Best and Worst?

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Dear Betsy:

I love your blog. Thank you. I wonder if you can help me. I have started any number of novels but I never seem to get past page 60. I’ve tried outlines, talking the story into a tape recorder, index cards, you name it. But I always hit that wall. Any tricks? Suggestions?

NAME WITHHELD

Dear Running Start:

I know from this. I have some of those 60 pagers tucked away somewhere myself. Why does it happen? What does it mean? Bottom line:  you’re probably not a novelist. Tolstoy told me that he had barely warmed up by page 60. That’s the moment at which a book usually needs to shift into second gear, or maybe be thrown wildly into reverse. If you’ve written entire outlines or outlined your book on index cards (my perferred “method”), you should be able to get a little further down the line. Your problem generally occurs when a writer heads into the forest with nothing but garlic flavored croutons or yogurt covered raisins in her pocket.  Or, maybe you have a congenital disease and on some level you know that if you wrote pg. 61 your heart would explode leaving your computer in a crimson spray whilst you keeled over at your desk, not to be found until the following Tuesday when the cleaning lady came and noticed a hideous stain or red and yellow on the kitchen ceiling because by now your body had drained itself of all its blood and other bodily fluids and seeped through the floor of your office. Have you thought of writing novellas?

Contest: what is the first sentence of page 61? Winner gets the usual, though perhaps a holiday bonus if you’ve been really naughty.

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I want to be Bob Dylan. I have the boots. I have the Ray Bans. I’m Jewish. I have a terrible voice. I want to be Alan Ginsberg. I’m capacious. I’m ravenous. I’m short and bald and in love with kaddish. When I walk up the subway stairs my heart breaks for the warped heel on a worn shoe, a life of leaning too much this way or that. When I spoke to the kids at Holy Cross I wondered what my life would have been like if I tried, for just one day, to write full time. I took the road well traveled; has it made a fucking difference? I am kidding myself. Once upon a time you looked so fine. A woman lights a long cigarette as if she were a screen actress from the thirties. A man with a mutt carries a bag of dung in his palm as if it were a sack of gold coins. The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy! I think I would have gone under the waves had I not found this work, these writers, these pages, and sentences. I should be more grateful.

What about your twin? Your shadow?

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Today is the third birthday of this blog. I am now a full on toddler, out of my diapers, goodbye to my sippy cups; I barely nap. I started thinking of this as a three month experiment and now it’s a colonoscopy.  Do you feel me? A lot of wonderful things have happened as a result of typing every night: there’s a whack group of writers who support each other and wear Forest for the Trees bracelets. I’ve been invited to write some articles and a young adult book (clearly a nod to my sophisticated and mature language). I’ve got ads now! Could not be more proud of this narcy thread turning commercial. But mostly, it’s all of you beautifully bruised fruit who leave incredible comments, some of them worthy of  the the secret notes pressed into the Wailing Wall. I love you all. You are all like a flock of black birds who take residence on my telephone wire, coming and going through the day, chirping or not, pecking out the eyes of any one who pisses you off.

Thank you for coming, for indulging, for sending all the cash and presents. I really appreciate it. Now get the fuck out of here and finishing your motherfucking manuscript. Love, Betsy Lerner

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I was on a panel tonight at The College of Holy Cross. The moderator asked me what I was doing when I was college age and in the few years after.  Fucking up, battling depression, gaining and losing tons of weight, having bad affairs, eating cheeseburgers, smoking Marlboro’s, wearing cowboy boots, going to poetry readings,  sending mental signals to guys I liked in my literature classes, failing typing tests at major publishing houses, frequenting coffee houses and haunting book stores, alienating friends, stock piling Percodan, and writing bad poems. I know, I’m an inspiration.

What were you doing?

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