Tomorrow, I am driving two hours to Wayne, NJ. Apparently, there is a class of writing students who have all read my book at William Patterson University. I am deeply flattered by this and felt I had to accept the invitation. I hope they know what they are getting into. I told my daughter about it and she asked the one and only relevant question: what was I going to wear. I’d write a better post if I had time, but I now have to ransack my closet in some pantomime of looking for something to wear. Anyway, I’ll let you know how it goes. Quick true or false: writers are generally crappy dressers.
This?
Or this?
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When I was in high school, I met a woman in my poetry class. We were from opposite ends of the earth, meaning she was an athlete and I was a deadhead. We discovered our shared love of poetry and entered into a clandestine friendship, exchanging our diaries and poems for each other to read. After graduate school, I would meet a prose writer with whom I formed an instant bond. We could say anything about each other’s work. Gloves off. Bring it on. Twenty-five years later, she is still the little bird on my shoulder, still my first reader. I remember reading in Joan Didion’s memoir, 
Am working on the copy edit of the revision to Forest for the Trees. I thought I was making it better, but today it seems worse. You know how that is. In fact, I can’t believe I ever got it written in the first place. I seriously don’t know where I got the balls. The cojones. The brass ones. The nuts, nads, teabags. The taint, the testes, the kajmaster. The ballpark.
A revelation to me is a series of books that all have my favorite word in the title: dead.
Dear Readers: I apologize in advance. And if you can’t take it, then skip today’s post. But here’s one where I can’t find anything negative to say. I just can’t. Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida is mecca to book lovers. And following that line of thought, its proprietor, Mitch Kaplan, is a god. Do not go to south Florida and fail to stop in (and spend serious time) at this store. Your aching body will straighten itself, your exhausted brain will oxygenate, your bunions will dissolve. Why? Because this is one of the country’s great independent bookstores and from the moment you set foot inside, you become part of a working intelligence that cares about everything you care about.
Here’s the deal: my narrative nonfiction book is coming out in the fall. 
What made this particular book so hotly contested? It’s controversial, for starters. Exhibitionistic even. And the idea at the heart of it is something that people are both curious about and invested in. The author also has what’s known as an impressive pedigree. But it’s more than that: whether or not you like what he has to say, he touches a chord. You have to touch a chord. Unfortunately for me, whenever I think of touching a chord, the next thing I think about is touching the third rail.
I’m the middle of three girls. My two sisters have blonde hair and blue eyes. I don’t. They used to call me Jan Brady after the Brady Bunch episode where Jan gets a brunette wig to differentiate herself from Marcia and Cindy. I think the psychological term is “individuate.”
Betsy Lerner 