What makes you buy a book? The title, the jacket art, the author, the blurbs, the author photo, the first sentence, first paragraph, last line? Do you read a review, see something on Facebook, see the author on Trevor Noah, or hear about it from a friend, your book club, Goodreads, word of mouth.

What gets you?

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I’ve been in NYC the last few days doing the agenting thing, by which I mean glamorous parties, auctions, meetings with Polish agents who still smoke and have alluring eyebrows. Or, to be more accurate,  sitting at my desk eating a do I dare peach Chobani yogurt, being put on hold for an hour and forty minutes with Verizon, paying the bills, and packing up my manuscript bag with over 500 pages of paper that all say the same thing: read me first. Not complaining, just saying.

What’s your work day? Like the not writing part?

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I received an email tonight from a woman who is hosting her book club and they are reading…The Bridge Ladies. To get in the spirit, she is taking out the china and silver. You guys know that very little makes me happy, and the happier something makes me the sadder I feel, but all that aside, I’m truly tickled to have heard from this woman in Atlanta. Atlanta! I’ve heard from other folks hosting books clubs. I’ve even been invited to a few (one was all Canadians)! And I’ve been invited to Bridge Clubs where I do a little reading and then we break out the cards. I try to act like whatever, but I admit it: I’m happy to hear from people who like the fucker.

What’s the nicest thing you’ve ever heard in relation to your writing?

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I met with six writers and talked about who they are, why they write, and what their work feels like. We looked at twenty pages and found some themes, some clunkers, some wonderful adjectives and transitions, some bloat, some moments of truth, some wit, and some duck duck goose. I wondered what they did after our meetings. Starbucks? Laptop? The Affair? I wondered what it meant. I thought about my hideous graduate school days, depression in full force. Dancing on the line. Did anyone ask me? Did I tell anyone? I loved these students for their life. Their sweet life. One young man wore three necklaces strung on lengths of leather. Totems from another life, a feather from India made of bone. I fell back in love with the writing life.

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Just finished my last reading on this mini-tour.  I finally caved and got a Kit Kat. I’m crashing. It’s hard not to hate on myself. In fact, the better I do, the more I hate. It’s just an old song, a sad reflex, a folie a deux between me and myself. And it’s not all that bad either, just a familiar old friend showing up when you least need it. No mini bar. MSNBC 24/7. A young woman asked why I went into publishing instead of becoming a writer. Why did I become a bicycle instead of a fish? I have to get out of this dress.

How am I doing?

I need to get out of this dress.

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Today was a double-header. A reading in the morning and  the evening. That’s a lot of Bridge and Betsy. I’m chillin’ now with MSNBC in an overly warm hotel room in Fort Lauderdale. No mini bar. I love the ladies who turn out for these events. They’re major readers and book buyers. It’s easy to make them laugh. They come with their stories of daughters who don’t talk to them, mothers who criticized.They ask a lot of the same questions: what does my mother think; has my daughter read the book, how long did it take to write? Are you working something else? Tonight a first: a fan gave me doobie!!! My mother was not amused.

What did your mother do to you?

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In a few days, I’m meeting with six students in a MFA program for one-on-one sessions to talk about their writing. They have each turned in twenty pages of their novels-in-progress. I read the pages today and was struck by a few different things. First, the pieces were diverse. When I was in graduate school, everyone wanted to be Raymond Carver or Anne Beatty. Everyone was trying to write the same story. These students were all over the place: sci-fi, elliptical structure, parallel stories, confessional, absurdist and one I can’t describe. It was the stippling of a trout, a column of stacked clouds, a choppy sea dotted with grey-blue seals. They all seemed free.

What kind of writer are you?

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Buckled down this weekend and got some serious revision done. For me the key is putting the pages down for a week or so and looking at them fresh. Putting the pages down, stepping away from the car, is really hard. Losing a connection with your work is kind of terrifying. What if you can’t reconnect? What if, when you check in, it’s an unmitigated disaster? Some writers say it’s all about the revision.

What say you?

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Who’s still in therapy? Not me, but I need it more than ever. Here’s why I won’t go back: I’m tired of the moi. I see all the therapists of Christmas past dancing in front of my eyes, mocking me.  I see the couches and vacations in Turks and Cakes that I paid for. I think about all the pain that pools into an hour, the Persian  carpets whose threads I counted. I might as well start smoking and drinking again. Coke Zero. You have to stand up sometimes. Sometimes strength means asking for help.

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I cleaned my desk today and organized a desk drawer. That should give you some indication of the suck ass day I had trying to patch a few sentences together. Why am I alive? Why do I want to do this more than anything else? Why can’t I ever be happy? I wish I went by Elizabeth. Betsy Barrett Browning. Betsy Harwick. Betsy Bishop. Betsy Gaskell. I wish I went to Nova Scotia after grad school and married a potter. I actually separated large from small paper clips. I threw away pens that dried up and pencils that went stale.

How be you?

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