I’ve been getting a lot of fucked up query letters lately. People who clearly haven’t taken six seconds to look at our website and see what I’m interested in. People who come from inside an alien whale pod that hovers strangely above planet earth. One person wrote a six-page single-spaced query letter. Some proposals sell on less. The theory of relativity took fewer pages. I’ve received queries from people who seem to happily admit they have no credentials whatsoever. Pot heads, pill heads, prison guards. Journey, journey, journey. Is everything a fucking journey? Can’t anyone sit still?  One letter was in esperanto. Cuneiform. Formaldehyde. One asked me to explain how to write a query letter that he could send to other agents. Maybe it’s me.

I know it’s hard to write a good query letter, but we are talking about writers. Thoughts? Feelings?

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When I was a young editor and it was my  mandate to take agents out to lunch, I found the whole thing really daunting. It was worse than a blind date, though somehow like a blind date. But the worst was when a famous agent asked me to come see her near her office in the upper east side. It was a huge trek. When I finally got there, the agent was already in a booth. I sat down and she handed me a menu. I could tell I was meant to decide on something quickly, only just then I looked at her because I thought she was crying. She put her head in her hands and said, “If I have to eat another cobb salad, I’m going to kill myself.”

What do you say to that?

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One more thing from that stroll down memory lane. One young man asked me how much I read of a manuscript before I reject it.  I told the students that after all these years, I pretty much know by the first paragraph. The young man said Ooof. I thought I was demonstrating my confidence as a reader gained over many years, but of course from their vantage point I had just become the rim greaper.

Then he asked what I look for in a first paragraph to keep me reading. Baby teeth, silver charms, brass buckles, nameless women, faceless men. I want that thing called language, just one startling simile. Or VOICE. Or tap shoes, orthodontia, a character named Buck, or Puck, or Peanut, or Slim. I want I want I want to see five rats walking down the street, I want you to bring me the tattoo of Lena Dunham, Johnny Carson’s cravat, the last great kiss, or good kiss, or mediocre kiss or dry mouth or vermouth. I want a writer who is in so control so I can relax.

How much of a book do you read before you quit?

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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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