I went to Blue State today, a local coffee swillery, to get some reading done. It was packed and I shared a table with a young man who kindly gestured for me to sit when he noticed my stunned where-am-I-going-to-sit-in-the-cafeteria look. Just a page into my manuscript, he asked me if I was reading a manuscript. Yes. Then, politely, he asked if I would tell him what I was writing. I explained that I worked with writers, that the manuscript belonged to a client. He wanted to know what it was about. I told him. I started reading again. He returned to highlighting his own notes in a wide, unlined notebook.
May I disturb you again, he asked. Is there any other purpose to reading beyond information or entertainment? I think so, I said. Such as, he asked. Consolation, identification, understanding, I said, for communicating. Do think there’s anything wrong with playing hundreds of hours of video games, he asked. I said I wasn’t sure. Pinball was my game freshman year. But that’s just reflexes, he said, these games are whole worlds, and then he said something about an avatar. I thought he was a lonely freshman, but it turns out he was a lonely first year architecture student from Canada.
I remember spending hours in cafes when I was an undergraduate. I don’ think I ever spoke to anyone. I didn’t need to, armed with my notebook, Rimbaud, and Marlboro Lights. What about you? Cafe time? And, just for the hell of it, where do you stand on Starbucks? We’ve known each other long enough; I want to know what you drink, if you drink, and if you ever wrote anything at a Starbucks worth reading. I’m extremely happy they didn’t exist when I needed to brood full-time.
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Janet Reid’s got a great
My husband sold his first novel last month. When we were just out of college, we’d meet on Friday nights, go for dinner at the Second Avenue Deli, go to the St. Marks Poetry Workshop, and then spend hours at the Cloisters Cafe talking poetry, love, life. I smoked Marlboro Lights. He smoked Parliaments. We didn’t become romantically involved until much later, but we cemented a friendship that was fueled in part by a belief in the other as a writer. Neither of us chose the path of a writer’s life. We’ve both worked full time in publishing for more than 25 years and have done all our writing on weekends, nights, or pre-dawn. When we had our daughter, we spelled each other for long weekend days so the other could write. We understood the desire to be alone. It’s more than a desire. It’s a necessity, an imperative.
Went to Brooklyn today (three subways) to talk with Pratt undergraduates about publishing. Naturally, I became nostalgic about my college years, never mind the near constant misery. The big difference as far as I can tell is that we never met publishing professionals, never talked about how to get published. I think in some ways we were lucky not to start those engines too soon. We didn’t even have a creative writing major. We were allowed to take one writing course and I took poetry; the professor favored the ballerina-poets. I wrote all the time in my journals. I went to cafes and wrote and smoked and read. But I had no idea what a query letter was or how to write one. I had no idea what an agent was or what they were for. Today’s kids have seen Jerry Maguire, they study the box office grosses, they know the names of power agents.
Do my tits look really big in this shirt? Agh, getting ready for a dinner party. Eighteen people. A frighteningly high percentage of poets. Other brainiacs from the campus known as Yale. Maybe some day, in anticipation of a dinner party, I will feel and behave like a grown up, but not yet. Why do I want to have a tv dinner and watch Glee in my jammies? My husband points out the networking possibilities. This is the exact wrong thing to say. Though I know he is right and I know that other agents would work the room like a square dance chain. Last night, in anticipation of the big event, I threw a shit fit over which water pitchers to use. My husband and daughter got really quiet and I knew crossed a line. It felt insanely good. One of my professors used to call parties enforced gaiety.
While I was in Paris, I stayed at a hotel that used to be a monastery and it still had monastic amenities. In other words, no television, no radio, no minibar. There wasn’t even a clock in the room, just the ringing of the church bells next door. On top of this, I do not have an international cell phone. So without any of the usual methods by which to measure my self worth: scale, blog stats, emails, phone calls, or any of the usual distractions: LA Law, diet coke, tropical flavored jelly beans, I did the only thing left for me to do: write. I brought two books and a notebook in which I have been writing a book for three years on and off. I read both books and I filled nearly forty pages in my notebook. My hand ached, ink splats appeared on my hands and on my shirt, and the pad from pressing too hard appeared on my middle finger, a badge of something.
I have a confession to make: I’ve always been afraid of killing someone by accident while driving. I’m sure you’ve had the experience where a person seems to appear out of nowhere as you’re backing out or making a left turn, no matter how many times you look. I’ve never been able to easily shake those moments, but instead replay them over and over. Do you do this? Is it normal?
I spent a few days thinking of ways to mortify Betsy in this space, but I don’t have a copy of her updated book, and I don’t have the patience to click on every link in her blogroll looking for things to hate. I considered writing about how your publishing ‘team’—your agent and editor and publisher—functions like a family, more specifically a family in which your publisher fucks you under the stairs while your editor pretends not to notice.
Okay: You’re a writer, I’m a writer. It’s five in the morning, your neighborhood is asleep except for the guy whose having an affair with the lady down the block and the kids huffing under the magnolia tree and Old Man Needer who has been walking in his sleep since Leno went off the air and he keeps waiting for the national anthem and those planes flying in the air and flags flying…..before the 24/7 became a plague on humanity. You sit, turn on your computer (if you have a typewriter I admire you; if you are actually writing with a pen or pencil I love you). You write this sentence and you shuffle for another cup of coffee. You’re back. You read and reread your sentence and you continue. . .
Betsy Lerner 