Tonight was the opening of CAMERA SOLO, Patti Smith’s photography show at the Wadsworth Atheneum. It was very nice of her to choose a museum in Hartford, Connecticut, home of Wallace Stevens, Mark Twain, Katharine Hepburn and Totie Fields. The photographs are intimate, full of personal references, a poet’s associations. Virginia Woolf’s cane, Roberto Bolano’s chair, Robert Mapplethorpe’s slippers, her father’s cup, Whitman’s tomb, Blake’s grave, Brancusi’s grave, Hesse’s typewriter, Keats’ bed, and Rimbaud’s utensils. And then she rocked the capital.

What are your sacred objects?

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Writers fuckin’ hate other writers. Old writers hate young writers. Young writers hate old writers. Women writers resent male writers.  Men don’t even regard women.  Teachers hate their students. Students want to run their teachers over and take their place. Everyone really hates New Yorker writers.

Here’s why:  money, prizes, acclaim, talent, and staying power. Not enough to go around. This  article in New York Magazine is pretty benign, snoozy even, but there is a little penis envy to enjoy.

Here are some things writers have said to me over the years: I really love so and so, too bad his new novel isn’t that good. I liked her novel a lot, I did, but did it really deserve the Pulitzer? He’s a great stylist, a writer’s writer, but does it really add up. He’s a really good writer, it’s too bad he doesn’t sell. He stopped writing good books like a decade ago, but of course I have the utmost respect. I’m not saying he’s selling out, but zombies?

What is the nastiest thing you’ve ever said about another writer?

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It’s 10:30, do you know where your clients are? Writing, flogging, blogging, reading, watching re-runs? Drinking, spanking, on-line banking? Looking at art books, reading The Believer? Fighting with their spouse, sexting their neighbor, walking the golden, rolling a doobie. Correcting their pages, emailing their agent, snacking and by that I mean “snacking.” Watching Entourage, admiring Ari, making crepes, singing Adele, shaving legs. Writing in their diaries, cranking out footnotes, on-line dating, on-line shopping, playing poker, commenting.

What about you?

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As you can imagine, I get a lot of requests from writers to promote their books on this blog. Well, sweet love, the only books I promote are my clients’ books, my books, and books by people I’ve slept with. I can not be bought. Until today. I’m flogging The Great Typo Hunt not because I’ve slept with the authors (together or separately), not because I’ve read the book and admire it,  or because  the on-line marketing guy gave me fifty dollars. No, the reason I’m plugging The Great Typo Hunt is because they sent me the book with tchatzkies. And not just any tchatzkies, but my favorite: office supplies. If you haven’t seen me cruise a Staples or beautiful old stationery store, you really don’t know where I live or how I make it through the day.

So fellas, Jeff and Benjamin, when you’re done with this norshkeit, marry those girls you mention in your acknowledgments and grow up. The world is filled with mistakes that you can’t fix. Until then, good luck with the book and thanks for the Chisel Tip Dry Erase Marker.

What’s your favorite stationery store item? OR, what mistake would you erase?

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Look, I knew when I joined the race of percenters that I would have to make some changes in my life. I was okay with coming into rooms under the door, I was okay with people making a sign of the cross and running to the nearest clove of garlic when I told them what I did. I didn’t mind handing in my beautiful white editorial wings, or my shabby chic couch with pale rosettes. I was okay with cat eyes and hair inside my mouth. With having two mouths and an instruction manual for speaking out of both sides of both of them.  Or the pull cord that comes out of my fleshy side, or the way my excretions are black and ash, or when I look in the mirror I see the face of the last man I lied to.

Revising question: What lies have you told agents? Tell the truth

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Obviously, I’m going to be in an uncharacteristically good mood for the next month. What does a good mood look like on a determinedly glass half empty kind of girl jacked up on mood stabilizers, you ask. It’s hell. First, I spend the month trying to fit into my DKNY suit from 2003. This alone basically robs me of any joy.  Next, if I even allow myself an iota of pride, I will be struck dead or murdered by the strange young man who showed up at my house last week who resembled Paul Theroux. I was on the phone and he asked if he should come back. Okay, I said, not really thinking it through, and now I’m convinced I will walk into my living room and he will there, or sitting at my desk when I turn on the lights in my office. My people are not good with good news. We believe in golems and Vaseline. Borscht and sour cream. Sour cream? Who would make cream sour?  Maybe I should just enjoy it, god forbid.

Who is going to kill you?

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I received an email today from an editor congratulating me for having another National Book Award nominee. What the fuck? I didn’t even know the nominations were being announced today. I scrolled down to Publishers Lunch and there it was, right there under the fiction nominees: THe Sojourn by ANdrew Krivak (Bellevue Press). I called Andrew who said he couldn’t talk because he was driving. Citizens! I asked him to pull over, hello, but he had to pick up his son. Okay. Was he in shock? Was I? He received the call on Friday from the head of the NBA, who instructed him not to tell anyone. And he didn’t. (More restraint than I’ve managed for my entire life.) My inbox started to fill with congratulations, including from a number of the editors who had passed on the book.  So gracious. Did I say I was in tears. I called to tell Patti and my mom. Guess who knew the right thing to say? Andrew called back, having gotten home and plied his three children with Graham Crackers.  (My mind immediately flashed on marshmallows and Hershey bars.) We enjoyed the moment. It had been a long haul to see this book published. I never wanted to give up. More important, he never did.

Congrats, Andrew.

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“Do you want me to tell you what you want to hear, or do you want to know what I really think?” This is probably the most effective agent line I use with writers who have gone off the rails. A couple of years ago, I gave my agent 75 pages I was quite proud of. I thought it has some of my best writing. (Of course, the moment you think that,  you’re fucked.)

He read them and told me, diplomatically, that it  wasn’t working. In fact, he found the main character totally off-putting. And he was able to put his finger on the fact that I was only partially telling the story; what was I side-stepping, or hiding? Decidedly not what I wanted to hear. ANd I shelved it for the time being.

It’s so freakin’ complicated. WHen do you stick to your guns and when do you capitulate? How many rejections are enough? Why is that bitch in  your writing workshop always getting under your skin with her seemingly off-hand remarks? Who fucking cares what anyone else thinks or says. What kind of a reader is she anyway with that boiled wool skirt and tortoise shell barrette?

So, do you want me to tell you what you want to hear, or do you want to know what I think?

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This is who I want to play me.

All along, I’ve thought that I was basing my main character on someone I know, or certain aspects of someone I know, or an amalgam of qualities that have always fascinated me. I thought his love interest was based on someone like me. But today, writing, I realized that the main character is me. And the love interest is me. And the daughter is me. ANd the son is a little like me. And then I imagined myself conducting an orchestra of people who all look like me, and a forest where I was all the trees, and a beach where every grain of sand was me.

Is your main character about me? If not, who?

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So often I hear a writer say, “I have to make myself write.” I always bristle at this, even though I’ve said it myself. I bristle because I have this naive belief that “real” writers don’t have to make themselves write. That they have to write, are compelled to, no use of force required.  I’m thinking of Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope. I used to know a writer who made a pact with another writer to motivate themselves. If they didn’t complete twenty pages a week, they had to clean each other’s toilet. Do you ever think if you’re having trouble writing that you should stop, leave it alone. Or is that a cop out, that you a have to push through it to get anywhere? And do you ever actually break through, push through, write a complex sentence that is so simple, or a simple sentence that is complexity incarnate. Is is like finally mastering a drum pattern or brush stroke?

Do you “make” yourself write and what does that look like.

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