This is my 30th anniversary of working in publishing. I’m not looking for a party or a Timex watch. I just need to say it: thirty years. Fifteen as an editor and fifteen as an agent. People always say that life happens in a flash, where did the time go, etc. Not so much in publishing. It’s a slow grind. Writing books is slow, publishing them is slow, recovering from publishing them can take an eternity. Still, and I know I sound like some kind of half-full gal, but it’s been extraordinary. Front row to writers doing their work, amazing colleagues, some who have become life-long friends. The parties, the drugs, a writer winning a prize, a book climbing the bestseller list. Every day going to the office, large Starbucks in hand, saying good morning to Pat at the door, and walking into a book lined office, my name on the door, simpatico people inside, talking their clients off the ledge, opening a new carton of galleys, going over a submission list, making a lunch date, chasing a check, another day.

What’s your day job?

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How do you pad your brain in cotton? Why do people keep talking? Are all the lights still flashing? How long can a canoe drift down a black lake with no wind or current. I am not going to say what I’m trying to say. In graduate school, a professor once described my poems as incoherent imagery connected by bad grammar. C’est moi. When I was in junior high and high school, I truly believed that poems were difficult to understand because they were meant to hide the truth because the truth was too dangerous. Just sensing what they were about was intoxicating enough for me. Sometimes at readings people ask me if I still write poems. I always feel I’m letting them down when I answer no, I don’t. Though I can still glimpse myself.

Who were you?

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What makes a writer turn to fiction vs. non-fiction? To poetry? Is it something internal or outside influences? How does the imagination form? For me, in high school, when I discovered poetry it was like being understood for the first time. And I barely understood what I was reading. I think it was like the way music makes sense to some people.

Do you know what I mean?

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I’m sorry, but it’s time to go back to basics. I have been receiving the most cuckoo for cocoa puffs query letters lately. It’s like watching a person shoot himself in the head instead of pitching his book. I can see the blood spatter on the wall.

I’ve said a zillion times: the letter has to be professional, but should give a sense of the writer’s style or sensibility. The letter should be three paragraphs: 1) introduce the project; 2) expand on it in an interesting way via the themes or good comps or most salient details  (no plot points please!);  and 3) your credentials. Writers often ask me, what if I don’t have any credentials? I always answer: get some! What if we can’t, they cry? It’s strange to think that you can sell a book before you’ve ever sold a story or an article. THough stranger things have happened. Nothing is impossible, but you will look a lot more attractive with some writing credentials. Remember too: We’re not best friends, this isn’t a grant proposal,  and I’m not your therapist. In other words, don’t act too chummy, don’t be flat, and don’t tell me your life story. Less is more when query letters are concerned. Oh, and have a memorable and selling title — this goes a long ways.

If you want to send in a query letter, I’ll critique it. And I will be brutal. 😉

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People these days talk about the journey, the process, they say that the journey is all that matters or matters most. I hate the whole idea of that. What’s so wrong with wanting results? With being result-oriented? People say that life is all about the journey. Who cares what life is all about anyway. Just do your fucking work and if you’re lucky enough to conceive of it as a journey, well keep it to yourself. Aren’t we kidding ourselves if we say the result doesn’t matter?  Aren’t we on a so-called journey because we are trying to get somewhere, accomplish something, great or small?

Have I lost the human thread?

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I’m being extremely promiscuous with my reading. Is it me or is them. Until very recently I was a monogamous reader. One book at a time. And I almost never put one down until I finished it. ANd I never skimmed. Now, I’ve gone wild. I’m in the middle of three books (William Finnegan’s Barbarian Days, Adam Haslett’s novel Imagine me Gone, Lucia Berlin’s short stories A Manual for Cleaning Women). I actually feel like I’m cheating on one when I’m spending time with another. Is there something wrong with me?

What are your reading proclivities?

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I’m feeling kind of lost. I don’t have a new project. I call writing projects “imaginary friends.” They are always there for you, always beckoning.  I also feel exhausted, like I need an oil change or a transfusion. It’s been over three years with the Bridge Ladies. No what am I supposed to do, learn Mahjong? I have always counseled writers to start a new project before their book comes out. This is excellent advice. Having failed to follow it, I am sans friend. I am a girl without a hat.

Got any imaginary friends?

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Hey guys, here’s an article called, “Rock, Paper, Scissors” that I wrote for Poets & Writers Magazine. It’s about being tri-sexual: an editor, agent, and writer. I can’t tell if it’s true or wearing rosy glasses. It’s too breezy for me. Do I love what I do? Do I love my writers? Am I a happy Good ‘n Plenty dancing around in a pink box?  What do I prefer: editing, agenting or writing? What do I prefer a cheese burger deluxe, a pizza half meatballs, or a bucket of anything? Do I like espadrilles or maryjanes? Have I learned from my mistakes?

Do you have a calling?

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I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: I developed my voice on this blog and it carried forward into my book. For one year, I tried to write the Bridge Ladies as a kind of New Yorker essay. No first person writing at all. Everyone I shared it with told me (in polite terms) that is sucked. My husband kept saying, you have to use your blog voice. (My husband initially discouraged me from blogging because of certain impulse control problems I’m known for, eventually he saw that it was becoming something amazing in my life.) I kept resisting; I couldn’t see my “blog voice” as having anything to do with The BRidge Ladies. But when I finally shifted to first person, the pages started coming to life, my sense of humor got engaged, and more important, I was able to write more deeply than I had been.

What is voice? It’s one of the most important aspects in a piece of writing and yet it’s something of a chimera. You can’t teach it, you can’t describe it the way you can talk about craft, you can’t fuck it. You don’t have to write in first person; voice comes through in any pov, any tense, any style. Yet, how exactly is intelligence, humor, empathy, authority communicated? Can you add it after like a pinch of salt or does it have to emanate from the sentences from the get go? Is it in the DNA of your writing or can it be developed, manipulated, deployed? Is voice an extension of how you sound or is it developed independently through the language you use. What exactly do we mean when we say voice-driven prose?

How do you find your voice?

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Is the “impostor syndrome” real?  Not that I’m feeling fraudulent or anything. Not that I don’t leave a wonderful book event and remind myself that I’m a glorious piece of shit. Actually feeling like a fraud would be welcome compared to the number I do on myself. I could take a fraud vacation.

What’s your syndrome?

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