It’s starting. THe quest for the perfect three or four books to bring on a little vacation next week. So far, I’m thinking about the Hunger Games (you might have heard of it), Salvage THe Bones by Jessamyn Ward (won the National Book Award) and one or two more. Please suggest just one book. If I take your suggestion, I will send you three books. Does that sound like a good deal?

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My Guy! Aaaron Paul! Winner! Congrats, Beautiful.

Posting live from the Emmy’s and I just want to say that I feel honored to be nominated in a category with as many talented and brilliant and wonderful actors and just being in your esteemed company is a prize. And I want to thank my acting teacher in the ninth grade and our housekeeper who read lines with me and and my TA freshman year at Harvard and my personal shopper Freddie and the third fry at Five Guys, you know why. Does my peel on tan look as bad as your peel on tan. Does this dress make my ass sag? I want to thank the brilliant creators, the team of writers, you guys are the best and make me look so good. HBO THANK YOU for doing what you do and giving artists the opportunity to be…artists.  I want to thank the cast and crew, oh god, you are all so talented. Squeal! Thank you thank you thank you.

Is it me or is Amy Poehler showing more bosom than ever before? Is it me or is Tina Fey’s hair stylist a meth head? Does Kristin Wiig need one? What’s with the color, girlfriend, you are not a mahogany dresser. Is it me or am I bleeding?

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Guys: CHeck this out. I finished watching the last episode of Breaking Bad Season Four and started googling myself and by that I mean surfing the web. I found a little movie some guy called Brandon made of Food and Loathing. It mocks all the most important scenes and an Asian teenager plays me, Betsy Lerner. I just want to say that this kid really made my day. This sort of mockery is what  it’s all about. I deserve it. I love it. I eat my own vomit. If you feel like having a laugh, at my expense, check it out. I gotta go to St. Dunkins and buy a box of munchkins. 

Food And Loathing Trailer – YouTube
► 9:25► 9:25	http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9OZachb5eUJun 6, 2012 – 9 min – Uploaded by bramsubhag Bloopers! : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaA8ZE-Jzj4&feature=youtu.be Video Edited by …

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Plagiarism is in the air. Fareed. Jonah. And I’ve heard some writers, in the wake of these revelations, wonder if their own prose is squeaky clean. If they haven’t “accidentally” been influenced by other works and if they’ve inadvertently taken another writers words. I went to a parents’ breakfast at my kid’s school the other day and cheating was a big topic. The head of the school said that most of the cheating occurs among the best students. NOt the kids trying to get a passing grade. But those trying to be perfect, to get an edge. I don’t really know if cheating and plagiarism are rampant, but I don’t think that it happens inadvertently. You know your own writing like you know your own hands. Stealing other people’s words is the lowest of the low.

Cheaters, liars, plagiarists. You got any stories?

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A few clients brought this story to my attention. My first thought was that it’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often. Let’s face it, agents can be cunty and a lot of writers are…living on the edge. For a period of two months while I worked at Doubleday, I received packages in the mail (no return address) that contained effigies made of clay, buttons, sticks and what appeared to be human hair. I brought each one up to HR and was convinced that one day they would be bagged and presented as evidence in a trial where I am the one in a body bag. SOmetimes writers just show up without an appointment  at the office with their manuscripts in hand. I’ve learned to just say thank you instead of reciting some hollow policy about not  taking manuscripts because this person might be packing. I do not want to die in the line of duty.

Do you have a revenge fantasy?

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Today, I had a breakfast meeting with an editor (egg white omelette with mushrooms and onions), and she took out an iPad and walked me through her company’s catalogue and more specifically the books she had acquired. She was able to enlarge photos with a flick of her finger. WHen I looked up from the tablet, I was staring at Steve Jobs and he smiled and nodded, yes, Betsy, you too can come with us. And then the woman continued and the jackets were fabulous and her quick descriptions were smart and pithy. And I thought that I probably had more than a few projects that might work for her, that I would show her. But I couldn’t get over the pad even though it was a brilliant presentation.

Why am I so old?  How old are you, technologically speaking?

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In my memoir Food and Loathing, I wrote about going to temple on the high holy days and seeing a particular woman who was always dressed to the nines. I compared her to Snow White’s evil stepmother, and my mother and I debated whether she had a healthy ego getting dolled up like that or if she suffered from  low self-esteem like us and was compensating. After the book came out, people from our temple read it and knew exactly who I had written about and they’d whisper to me, it’s so-and-s0, right? I’d deny it, say it was a composite of the Woodbridge matrons. Of all the things I could regret writing in that motherfucking book, nothing troubles me as much as my portrayal of that temple lady. I saw her again today. She was as haute as ever. I avoided making eye contact as I do every year. I feel like an asshole because I made fun of her and she was an innocent bystander in my screed. It was an easy laugh. An easy mark. I wish I had handled it better.  Of course, the laugh is finally on me since I’m still sitting here in temple on a day of renewal and hope feeling like a piece of shit in a four year old dress.

Do you regret anything you’ve written?

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FIFTH IN A FIVE PART SERIES GONE OFF THE RAILS:  No you didn’t.

I really want to know why the fuck you keep writing . I want to know who the fuck you are when you sit down at your desk and if that person is different from the one sitting down to a bowl of heart smart Cheerios. I want you to take your place at the Roundtable. I want you to ride with the Merry Pranksters. I want you tell Terry Gross how you used to be a cutter, and a boozer, and a pillhead, and a whore. Terry, writing saved my life, literally. Terry, I used to make up stories as a young girl. I pretended I was Anne Frank and I started keeping diaries just like her. This is my process. Terry, you’ve spoken with thousands of writers, are they all full of shit? Oh, Terry!  The key to creativity? Mania, sorrow, a fascination with bodily functions. Shame, fear, a day of perfect never ending rain. Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wing? Raymond Carver, come here! Is this what we talk about when we talk about rugs? What is this fucking need to write shit down?

Will anyone love me?

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Fourth in a Five Part Series: The Fucked Up Things Writers Think

Your best friend from graduate school gets a poem in The New Yorker.  Your husband sells his third novel, you have yet to complete your first. Your shrink wonders out loud if this writer’s block is all in your head. HELLO?!  Your father wants to know when you’ve had enough of this nonsense. The most handsome guy at a Paris Review Party doesn’t acknowledge your presence in a conversation circle while regaling the close knit group about his adventures in Hollywood (George Clooney optioned his book and is starring in the movie.) You watch Little Women and wish you were Winona Ryder. You watch Girl, Interrupted and wish you were Winona Ryder. You watch Heathers and you wish you were dead. The New Yorker announces its 20 under 30. If only they published 40 over 50. Your chin looks like a battle ground. You lose your Moleskin in a Starbucks. Two pages a day. Just two pages a day. Ta-tum ta-tum ta-tum ta-tum. What did you have, how did you lose it. You have sex more often than you write! And you never have sex. You need to get away. You need to stay put. You need to read poetry.  You used to write poetry for fuck’s sake. You need to draw and quarter any writer within a ten mile radius who gets published, has a successful single Kindle, loves their agent, finds writing cathartic, carries around a yoga mat in the middle of the day and drinks soy venti grande low fat skinny jeans.

What are you thinking?

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THIRD IN A FIVE PART SERIES: How Writers Sometimes Think

A writer gets his manuscript returned from his editor with a six page editorial letter and the manuscript red-lined within an inch of its life. He knows the dude means well, but he’s full of shit. Sure, he’ll read through the edits and take a few (give the dog a bone), but mostly he thinks the book is great as is. Aren’t editors just wannabe writers anyway? He knows the book is great and tinkering with it could diminish its essential power. Writer #2 is mortified by all he has done wrong, all that needs to be fixed. He thanks god for his editor, who has saved him from any number of embarrassing mistakes. Did he really change tense three times in one paragraph? He slavishly attends the edit. How did the book get acquired in the first place, he wonders, slinking back to his desk.

Can anyone formulate the question?

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