How can tell if your work is good? How can you tell if it’s done? how do you know if readers will feel what you want them to feel? See what you see? Why did you choose red over scarlet? Blue over cerulean? Dumb ass over douche bag? What’s the frequency, Kenneth? Is your character real or made from mix? Does your work scream amateur or does it mingle in a smoking jacket? How does time move? A day, a year, a century? A million kisses? Is there a clock? For whom does it toll? To thine own self? Or Ruth amid the aliens? What pattern is the wallpaper, the china, the china china? Are your similes brittle, brash, unexpected, bashful? Does a river run through it? Do you even know what it is “about?” And please don’t “about” me. Are you lean, concise, compressed? Bold, sassy, expansive? Highway or my way? Back hoe or pick? Do you tap, slam, rap, dip? Brush, smudge, thumb, tongue. Do you lick it, kick it, kill it, burn it. Are you in the driver’s seat? The sandbox? The stairway to my fat heaven. Can I see your license and registration? Do you seek the sun, the sea, the long finger of love.
Who says you’re a writer?
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According to Bookmovement.com, where over 26,000 book club groups are registered, here are the top twenty book club picks of 2010:
Okay, fuck the query letter. But before I take my pre-holiday dive into depression, weight gain, and the return of the winter rash between my big and second toe, I have to tell you something, Nation. Tonight, from 6:45-8:30, I was in the GREEN ROOM of the Colbert Report. I was there, of course, with Patti Smith. Mr. Colbert is too big of a pussy to have me on his show and take me up on my challenge to eat through an interview. But the laugh is on him, because I ate through his green room: raspberries, blackberries, pineapple slices as thin a permanent paper. There were six kinds of cheeses, crackers, prunes (though maybe just large olives), and a HUGE JAR of m&m’s. Yes, folks, this is LIVING.
Kids! Great news! We made the 
The bats are out tonight. I don’t know why, or I’m just not saying. I keep going back to a scene in which a young man breaks down over a crib. I keep going back to a scene where a girl locks herself inside a gas station rest room. There’s a woman at St. Dunkin’s named Shilpa, and every morning when I go to NYC she gives me a huge smile and remembers how I like my coffee. Would you be surprised to know I sit in the same car in the same seat? I am mourning the loss of letters. I am mourning the loss of lettuce. Stones on top of graves. The cards my father dealt. Let’s split it three-ways. Promise me you’ll never never stick a needle into your face. Sometimes when I drive I think I am a middle aged mother running errands, or a man who makes toasters for the traveling show. I feel hopeful and hopeless. I am Louis XIV. I am his heir. I am the guillotine. The humble shovel. I thought the Elgin marbles were marbles. I am not really writing. Don’t ask me about poems. I was sixteen. Words exploded on a page. Has Betsy always been creative? Oh, yes, my mother says. I am cutting paper. I am adorable. Intent. I keep going to a scene I can’t remember.
Here’s the 
525 Comments as of close of day Friday. It was like a freakin’ avalanche. This must be how Bransford feels all the time. I wasn’t sure anyone would even leave a title. So thanks to everyone who participated. To choose “the best,” it was impossible to do anything but sift through the titles as if through a pile of query letters. And I’ve selected those with exactly the same criteria as I do the letters that cross my desk: does the title (and some combination of elements in the letter) make me want to read more?
Betsy Lerner 