On Wednesday, I was invited to speak to a group of MFA students at Columbia. WHERE I WENT. Let’s talk about PTSD. The first day of graduate school thirty-something years ago, I climbed the steps to Dodge Hall, tripped, fell and all my shit went sprawling. I always felt it was a harbinger of things to come: many stumbles, one great terrible fall.

I’m looking at the faces of the students and it’s all there: the anxiety, competition, bravado, meekness, the sheer ambition, the massive insecurities. Their questions painted the gulf between their world and mine. I felt happy that I no longer had to spend so much energy wondering if I would amount to anything. I also felt caught up short when they asked why didn’t I pursue poetry, art. Was it failure of imagination, belief, ego? What does it even mean to ask: do you have what it takes? Maybe the question should be: what do you have to give? One young woman really pressed me: why didn’t you become an artist. Why did you make your choice. I took a breath and said I had a mental breakdown while I was in graduate school, and I learned that I needed structure, a regular paycheck, and health benefits.

What about you?

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I’m sure I’ve quoted one of my heroes here before, “Loyalty to the family is tyranny to the self.” Or quoted Philip Larkin’s This Be the Verse:

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Tonight at a reading in Rochester something kind of amazing happened. The Q&A turned into a confessional. People were opening up in a very deep way about their failures as mothers, and failures as daughters. It was so painfully clear that daughters never stop seeking approval from their mothers and most never get it. So clear that a woman’s self-esteem is almost entirely based on the messages her mother sends. I felt that we were all, briefly, on a carpet ride. That the whole room went to a place together.

Do you feel me?

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Rooty toot toot rooty toot toot we are the men of the institute. Congrats to all the National Book Award Winners 2016. And to the villages that raised them. To those who prepared speeches and those afraid to jinx themselves. TO the hives running down your neck. To hoping that this is your gold night, your velvet dress. To every moment that tipped your way. To getting out of your panty hose and unhooking your bra. I don’t buy it, not tonight, you are beautiful.

Who would you thank?

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It’s been ages since I added a letter to ye olde asshole file, but two arrived today. That’s a first. Or maybe it’s my mood. Or The Mood. I think most people would think that these letters are really nice. Welcome to publishing 101. Of course they are meant to be nice. Or approximate niceness. Or nice adjacent. But they are really only meant to manipulate and I’ve probably sent a thousand just like them myself. So keep your own god damn file. I just hate the platypus. You know? These are sad dark days. Queen Esther blues. I get these faux invitations and so what, what do I care. Set it and forget it! I’ve always been too literal. Literally.

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I’ve been doing a lot of readings and events lately. And every time the exact same thing happens. In the two hours before the event, I become extremely irritable. It’s super convenient when my mother comes with me because I can take it all out on her. But either way, I feel a kind of free-floating churlishness, my inner monologue is hideous. Sometimes I even scare myself silently mouthing off to people who happen to fall in my path, taking too long fishing for coins in their purse, scrolling on their phone with an obnoxiously articulated thumb swipe, etc. By the time the reading starts, I’m a kitten. Then I get a bag of Swedish Fish on the way home.

What was your worst reading experience (either that you gave or saw).

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TOP TEN REASONS TO STAY IN PUBLISHING:

10) Gossip

9) Constant bitching

8) What goes around comes around

7) The unexpected

6) Friends

5) Genius adjacent

4) Praise, prizes

3) Royalties

2) Reading

1)  Books

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I was on a panel about mothers and daughters over the weekend at BinderCon. I have to admit I was dubious about attending, (don’t want to be a member of any club that would have me bullshit)  but it was galvanizing. We were four women with entirely different experiences about motherhood. Naturally, I stood for maternal criticism and daughterly low-self esteem. Got a lot of laughs, but was truly more moved by a Jamaican novelist who portrayed a matriarch lecturing her daughter about her lack of worth in their town and the larger world. Also a woman read about her daughter developing Tourette Syndrome. She could barely get through it and we were all with her. She wrote with such clarity and specificity; we were in her thrall.

Do you have a mother-daughter story?

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I’ve compared agenting to baseball in the past, but it seems apt now in the bottom of the fifth. You send out a project to 16 editors. The possibilities: get on first with a single modest offer; get on second with a couple of mid-size offers; get on third with a few offers now getting competitive; home-run = an auction, multiple editors chasing, the offers increasing; grand slam:all your dreams come true. Agenting is also like baseball in that you can, and will, strike out. When you can’t sell a book you believe in, when your writer gets called back to the farm, when you question everything you know, it’s all a bright beautiful shit show.

What’s your sports metaphor?

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