Finished a draft of the fucker before labor day. Now, she and I are giving each other the cold shoulder. I’m a firm believer of leaving your shit alone for at least a few weeks, become detached, even cold, before looking at it again. My husband asked me what I liked best about it and I said setting up stuff and knocking it down. Thirty five years ago at an alternative summer camp I got into a fight with a guy I had a crush on. He insisted that feeling was all that mattered. I was insisting structure. I guess I haven’t changed.

What do you do when you finish a piece?

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It’s one short mostly inconsequential scene and yet it takes all day, two days, three. Keep going back to it. More, less, add, chip. Why is it there. Delete. Replace, Delete. Now, it’s more a contest of wills. Will this little piece of shit scene win? Vanquish you and your lands. Oh, lord, let it go, move on, you are not the youngest person in the room. Maybe the scene is key or is it just setting something up and if that’s the case isn’t it, by it’s very nature, a golf tee?

What’s your favorite sports metaphor for writing?

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Do you think writers, by nature, are loners? And by loner I mean someone who generally feels alone, even at a party, especially at a party.  A person who can’t stand more than a few hours of togetherness, who prefers and relishes time alone. It’s taken me a long to time to understand that while I have the loner in me, I also like to be of the world. I’ve always felt these two parts of myself were in conflict, but I’m beginning to realize that they feed each other. I’m really happy to say that this week I’m burrowing in my mole hole.  I hope to see no one and no daylight. I plan to wear the same thing, eat the same food, do my back exercises and finish the fucker.

What are you getting done by the end of the summer?

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The good news: Keanu Reeves has become a book publisher. The bad news: he doesn’t accept submissions from agents.

Why is life so unfair?

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Yesterday, I gave an informational interview to a young man in search of employment in the publishing industry. I didn’t really want to take the time, but then I reflected on my own post graduate days when I idiotically bought cream paper to type my cover letters on and could not find cream White-out. I was a horrible typist, which also explains why I didn’t get any publishing jobs at that time, but worse I spent those hot summer days desperately trying not to make mistakes on my portable two-tone Smith-Corona, lest I have to retype the letter all over again. To Whom It May Concern. For Whom the Bell Tolls. All of which explains how I became the Corporate File Coordinator for two years in the Morgan Stanley Library, where I learned to retrieve documents from the SEC, print documents off microfiche, file documents in dossiers, shag bicycle messengers in the supply closet, buy joints on 10th Avenue and eat two Chipwiches for lunch, from different vendors, so no one would suspect. So when the young man asks me what my usual day like a literary agent is like, well, it’s mind blowing.

What was your first job?

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Today, on the down staircase, I was behind a young man whose t-shirt said, “Love your haters. They are your biggest fans.” Which means I am my biggest fan because I am my biggest hater. Go me! Do you think that your haters are your biggest fans because hating takes so much energy, impressive energy. I know I’m totally enthralled with the people I hate. I probably think about them more than the people I love. I hate myself for saying that.  My mother once told me not to waste my energy hating. That it hurts me more than it hurts them. Yes! Yes! Hating and self-loathing meet like the two rivers that flow into an estuary. And I hate myself for saying estuary.

What do you hate?

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Spent most of my vacation writing. The morning shift. The Osprey shift. The gradual light on the green lawn. I have to admit that I never really got in the zone. I felt rushed and agitated. I had two brainstorms then I promptly forgot them, like the realization you’re always just about to make in therapy, only then it wobbles on the edge of consciousness. I have a fantasy about writers who work full time on their writing that is horse shit. There is nothing pure or privileged or all hail the queen. You have to get to the green. You have to sink it. It’s not up to anyone else.

How do you solve a problem like Maria?

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The eternal battle: creative work v. life, mini-golf, grilled swordfish, a walk below a rusted train track, a young boy running with a fish as if all the world was caught between his two small hands. Mother in the hospital saying go home which means stay just a little longer. Lady in the next bed screaming abuse, constipation, never sick a day in her life, now in my life with her emoji eyes, her knees bulbous like an old mare. This contract, that headache, internet down, my own constipation a metaphor for what. My own hospital bed. My own head.

How do you clear the decks?

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Going on vacation. Plan to write my ass off. Like carpal, back pain, skin decimation, self loathing/love, seven day sweat pants, and couldn’t be happier. Being alone writing is the sandbox, mesmerized by the sand slipping through your hands, the fine dust lit by the sun. My idea of fun is begging the monitor for a simile. Oh, I love similes, the more knitted in the better. For all this yakking, I’ll probably choke. Not write a word worth saving. Why does talking about a project seem to sap it of its essential oils?

Are you superstitious about writing?

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In an interview with Anne Tyler in the NYT the other day, she inadvertently left a comment on my blog! In answer to how long can you go without writing, she said: What happens is six months go by after I finish a book and I start to go out of my mind. I have no hobbies, I don’t garden, I hate travel. The impetus is not inspiration, jut a feeling that I better do this.

I love this comment because I don’t believe in inspiration. I believe in compulsion, obsession, loneliness, intensity, fear, desire, ambition, revenge and confusion.

What about you?

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