I had a good day today. Chapter Ten was like a math equation such that no matter what I did, it didn’t add up. I struggled with it for a week, tried to break it in two. Made a thousand small cuts. Rewrote two sections from scratch. Added a new section. Then I saw that I had made incremental mistakes with the order, so I ironed that out. And then things started to fall into place. At least until I look at it tomorrow,
How can you tell if something works?
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Hi All: I’ve been out of touch because I’ve been writing and revising my ass off. Thank god I have some editorial skills to call forth because this manuscript is a mess. Not a mess mess, not a shit show, not a rat fuck, not two slugs fucking in a snot can, but it’s rough. In the meantime, the incredible Neil deGrasse Tyson did this.
How are you doing? Roll call. Lurkers welcome.
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I feel like I’m playing three card monty with myself. I cannot hold the whole book in my head. Last night at three in the morning it occurred to me where a section introducing a new character could go. I’d been struggling all day. I would have to redo my cards, my map, take one card out and does the whole thing fall. I love it I hate it I love it I hate it.
Remind me why surgeons don’t operate on their family members…
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I’m obsessed. I remember when I was in graduate school putting my final collection of poems together. l lined them up on the floor, stalked around them, smoking, looking for the move. Flow, impact, modulate length, feeling, keep the line moving. Into the abyss, into the fray. Or so it felt, my fifty some odd messages to the gods of confusion and obfuscation. My beloved professor compared me to Fran Leibovitz, not as a compliment. To this day, when I read a collection of poems, I start with the first, read the title poem, and then the last. By then I’ll know. I’m so tired of people saying you should give him another chance. With this novel, it’s more like a sliced rye and a rubber room.
What is your idea of order?
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Sometimes when I’m wrestling with a sentence or a paragraph or a phrase that proves elusive, I tell myself to fight for it. Don’t just let it go because you can’t make it better or grasp it or transform it in the moment. When do you fight and when do you throw in the towel. Or give it a few days and see if it yields. It’s like sitting in traffic.
How do you break through?
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I was getting groceries today at Fairway, a big supermarket on the upper west side of NYC. It’s sort of sprawling and chaotic. I didn’t realize that there was a line for the check out. A woman called out Ma’am. Then louder her voice a wall of sublime irritation. I immediately apologized and turned to find the line. Reader, this should have been sufficient, but she stared me down. I apologized again but she couldn’t let it go and said, What are you blind? On the walk back to my apartment, my honor challenged, I replayed the scene and thought of all the witty rejoinders I might have leveled at the women in the pink mohair beret and oatmeal vest.
I hate when that happens.
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I am so in my head. For the last three weeks, I’ve gone through my manuscript on paper, filled half a notebook with rewritten and new scenes, did a chronological timeline for accuracy, a map for major characters, I’ve weighed chopping a key chapter in two. I’ve gone back and forth between dividing the book in two or three parts. I’ve identified the phrases I need to word search for repetition, I’ve thought of more possible titles, I’ve got a list of things I need to research a little more. I’ve done index cards on my bulletin board, moved them around like checkers, and revised the first four chapters.
Do you like any of these titles:
The Most of It
Just for One Day
Lemon Tree
Shred Sisters
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Dear All: I want to celebrate a new collection of stories, A New Race of Men From Heaven, by my wonderful client, Chaitali Sen. I gave a talk at Hunter College many years ago and invited the students to send me their work. Many, many years later, I received an extremely polite note from one of the attendees. Was my invitation still good? I’ve worked with Chaiti since then. I RARELY work with fiction, but every now and then you’re thoroughly seduced. Congrats, Chaiti, lurker and friend.
“The stories in A New Race of Men from Heaven move elegantly between the ache of loneliness and the grace of connection, however fleeting.”
—Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections
““A New Race of Men from Heaven is a beautiful and moving story collection that shows us not only what it means to be an immigrant, regardless of where that journey may have started or happens to end, but also holds up a mirror to all the pain and joy that comes with being alive and engaged in the world today. Chaitali Sen knows her characters so intimately, knows what they yearn for, knows what keeps them up at night, knows what they are hiding from those closest to them and even from themselves, knows where they’re most vulnerable, knows where they need healing. She will break your heart in so many ways.”
—Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From
“These are wonderful stories—Chaitali Sen’s characters are such dear human beings: mysterious and lovable, irritable and alive. Each story is beautiful but together they are even better, about the anxieties and amnesias of our time, how strange and essential we are to each other. Above all they are truly surprising, in the way of life itself.”
—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum
“Chaitali Sen knows how to achieve that miraculous density that only comes from real mastery of the short story form. These stories are singularities: whole lives and selves and minds have been made, breathtakingly, to fit inside them. I felt these characters’ love and yearning in my bones. This is a brilliant collection.”
—Clare Beams, author of The Illness Lesson
“Almost every story here is a study in restraint, Sen’s considerable talent evident in her ability to wring meaning from the smallest details. Quiet, emotionally gripping stories.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
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When I wrote poetry, I loved revising. It’s was almost spiritual, certainly obsessive, intense, all consuming, counting the beats on my fingers, the breaks, looking for loopholes and chutes, for a current of air. No, that’s not right. A lot of smoking, a lot of bathrobe. A lot Chinese Food. Typing on onion paper. White out! Titles always came easily to me. How many letters? What’s the word for? Rilke, Rimbaud, Roethke. I’m trying to find the thread. Trying to push it without pushing it. Is that the key?
Can you manufacture emotion?
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Our office is moving and going paperless. I spent the day purging old files. So many notes and cards and letters and contracts and editorial letters and royalty statements and reviews. So much love and heartbreak. So many dreams realized and dashed. Everything we tried to do to break through. I’ve been in the front row to meteoric rises and ships that slipped beneath the waves. Everything was always so intense, striving, conniving, negotiating and tiptoeing. More bees with honey! Long editorial letters and pressed flowers. Postcards from the edge. Thank you notes. A poem from someone I used to know. Drafts of a book ten years in the making. And one file I couldn’t let go of. A writer I lost to the savage gods.
Who do you miss?
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Click here.
Sometimes I think a meteor could strike the earth and wipe out mankind with the exception of my mother’s Bridge club — Roz, Bea, Bette, Rhoda, and Jackie — five Jewish octogenarians who continue to gather for lunch and Bridge on Mondays as they have for over fifty years. When I set out to learn about the women behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, and most of all the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
Betsy Lerner 