It’s August 31, do you know where your novel is? Did you fuck this summer or did this summer fuck you? Did you work? Did you tunnel down, bite down, dig deep or did you drift, go back to sleep, weed your garden? I use the end of the summer to check in with clients who have gone awol for a time. So I’ll ask you: where are you at?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 19 Comments »

I went to Fort Collins, CO yesterday to celebrate Temple Grandin’s 70th birthday. We met about 25 years ago when I was a young editor at Houghton Mifflin having read Oliver Sacks’s article about her, “An Anthropologist on Mars.” I had a sense that she needed to tell her own story and that became the memoir, Thinking in Pictures. I met a woman at a bridge game this year and when it came out that I was the editor on that book, she said, if you never do another thing with your life, that book changed lives. Temple changes lives, and it’s been my great privilege to work with her on her books, and to know her.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

I think of my writing project as my imaginary friend. It’s all I think about no matter if I’m at a party where bacon wrapped scallops are being served, if I’m waiting outside Whole Foods for the prices to come down, if I’m weeding my weed garden, riding Icelandic ponies on a Vermont farm. It’s me and my imaginary friend on the cyclone, on the hay ride, in the sack, the potato patch, the aquarium and the aquarium gift shop.

Tell me about your imaginary friend.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

December 1987

To Mark

Whom I hope will always remain a poet in eternal youth and never lose his precious innocence.

Merry  Christmas baby

I love you, Rachel

I grabbed my copy of Poets in Their Youth by Eileen Simpson to take to Jury Duty (I got dismissed). I’d had it for years, found it in a second hand book store, was desperate to read it, but didn’t. When I opened it today, I found the inscription above. I felt like I was eavesdropping. Why was this beloved gift abandoned, returned, tossed back into the sea. Next, precious innocence? Doesn’t every poet want experience? But mostly I was so touched one person would give another a gift about poets in their youth.

Where are Mark and Rachel now?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 10 Comments »

I have jury duty tomorrow and I’m probably one of the few people in America who likes being called. (I also like conventions and trade shows). I love the people watching/scrutinizing, the bailiffs, the lawyers in their ill-fitting suits, and the ceremony. It feels like walking into a short story. I like the rules. I like to see what people are reading, if they are reading. I like the boredom, the slow hands of the clock, the linoleum. The thing I love about being a writer is the goddamn anthropology of everything.

What do you like that everyone else hates?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 17 Comments »

Did you see the eclipse or were you too busy writing? Did you feel the atmosphere change, the air charge, the shadows fall hard on the pavement. Did your heart darken, harden? Did you feel a drop? Did the wind die down? Your cape fall from  a telephone pole. Were ravens praying on a bench. Did you find a tangle of cellophane or a cup of moss, a cairn made of many stones? Did you think about nothing or how hollow you feel most of the time, even now under this delinquent sun?

Your eclipse?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

Congratulations to our beloved and beguiling SSS on her publication day.  This is true cause for celebration. Sherry thank you for being such an integral and supportive and loving member of our truly dysfunctional family. We love you. Congrats. You not only finished the fucker, you got her published. Wow.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

I’m going on vacation tomorrow, which means I’m going upstairs to my home office, lashing myself to the desk for seven days, and hoping that I win. It’s a death match, this writing business. It’s you against the beast. I don’t have any spiritual feeling about the work. I hate the words process and journey. I don’t send postcards. To me, it’s work. I don’t plan on learning anything new about myself or growing. I just want to go in punching and be the last man standing. Love you and leave you, fellow nut balls. Hope to see you next week.

What’s your idea of a vacation?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 15 Comments »

Today was my birthday and if you’re a writer you know what that means. Misery. Never enough attention. Want to be alone. Disgusted with lack of output. Disgusted with attitude. Inured to good wishes. Lonely when surrounded by friends. Hopeless. Speeches to self. Recriminations. Regret tinged with fear.  Bad hair. Bad skin. Rage against the machine, the body. No candles. No cake. No let up.

What’s your one wish?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 16 Comments »

Do you bounce around between fiction and non-fiction, poetry and plays, you get the point. Do you think writers are drawn to a certain genres almost genetically. For me it was poetry from age 15-25. A solid decade of line breaks and metaphors. I never dreamed of writing anything else. And when I went to grad school, it was nearly frowned upon to cross the aisle. Like you were a dilettante. I think anything is possible when parsnip marries potato.

Are you faithful or genre-promiscuous?

Filed under: Uncategorized | 14 Comments »