Slow Justice Is No Justice

This was on a movie poster I saw in the subway. Yes, it was referring to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, but it's apt.

So a week ago I declared that I was in love with someone and not telling that someone was enough for now. Don't. Be. Remiss.

Caring for someone, anyone, is the worst. I don't know why we do it, I don't know why we have no control over it, but I hate love. I have been in it at least half a dozen times and it has done nothing good for me. People have loved me, and I haven't loved them back. That was horrible for everyone involved. And I was on the good end. I would rather never date anyone again than be on the other end.

We saw each other. It was great. Too great. Why couldn't it have sucked more? Then I could go on thinking that I could handle this. Soooo...we are not together. I haven't asked for us to be. I try to keep that to myself. Because if this is a game of chicken, I'm going to win. Texting should be banned between the sexes. He read something in my texts to him on Saturday night that weren't there. He said I was being "weird." He asked to come over at 2:30 in the morning, I was asleep. He doesn't believe me. He thinks I'm lying, that I was out with musicians again. I'm never out with guys in bands! Why is he obsessed with me shacking up with a dude with a guitar just because I work in music? And so I'm getting punished for someone else's assumption. By him pretending he's too busy to talk to me. And by the way? He hadn't contacted me in days before we had this total, utter misunderstanding. So what if I had been with anyone?

There is a reason people break up.

Why why why can't I just not like boys. This one or any of them? They are so annoying! They are so confusing! They say one thing and then act like another. They change their minds all the time. I can't tell you how many have said the following, in this order: they love me, will I be with them forever, they can't be around me because I make them insane, never talk to them again, and please, please, talk to them now, visit them, pick up the phone, they miss me. There needs to be a law against saying all those things to the same person. After the "I love you" mark, you shouldn't be able to change your mind. It would be better, biologically, if we worked that way. I'd love to get a shot that stabilized my emotions for a year, that acted as an immunization against falling for people. A flu shot. Fast and quick and lasts a few months.

Much better than this slow burn. This slow justice for him to torture me because he thinks I tortured him, didn't take care enough of him, relied too much on him, brought him into my world and left him there alone. How many times can a person say sorry? How many times can a person keep trying to rebuild something out of sand?

Well, here's the thing. I've been running from this thing for months on months. I'll never outrun the forces pulling us together, I've got to lay down, out of its sight, and just let it pass.

I'm doing that with these feelings. It will. Just so another feeling about another person can come along. Bah. I'm not contacting him. But you know if he calls, I won't have the heart not to pick up. Will he? Who even cares. It's the same either way, we keep doing this junk until one of us has the means to leave this nonsense and go hurt...er, love...someone else.

You know what's good today? At least? I think I'm changing the pacing of my book. I'm going to start in the middle and run two storylines together in different times of the book. I know it sounds a little gimmicky, but I'm sure this will fix the problem I have with the book being boring for the first 70 pages. This way, I can cut them.

Coming up with a maybe solution for a 4 year book problem? If that's the result from keeping my phone off all day and not reaching out to him, then maybe this is the right thing after all...

The Writing Sanctuary

"Today we begin Session One, Class One of our MASTER NOVEL class. This is a writing sanctuary. A safe place to try new things, to make mistakes, to get our hands dirty with revisions, and to cheer each other on. We're here for the supreme and delicious goal of getting your novels into publication shape -- no small thing. And we're up to it.

Here's how I picture our sanctuary -- and feel free to add details and images of your own. Even share them on the board, if you like.
Right now there is a little twisty road in the country. We come to it at night, early on a winter's evening, just as darkness falls. At the end of the road is a cozy almost storybook house with arched doorways, stained glass windows, and a light burning in the study window.

You run up six brick and tile steps, aware, though all you can see are shadows, that you on the grounds of a rather elegant estate. You have a key to the arched front door, and you put your coat on the coat rack in the hallway, and grab up your portfolio of pages, because you hear voices from the study to your left.
This is where we meet. There's a fire going in the hearth, lots of worn leather chairs and love seats where you can curl up. You have a favorite place. Set your papers on your chair, and help yourself to wine, or tea or coffee -- or even a glass of champagne if you can keep your thoughts focused. Curl up in your chair -- there's a small table there for your drink. And now we begin..."

I like UCLA's 9 Month Master Class Program already...off to read...have a wonderful weekend...

Under-depressed

I haven't felt sad in days. What's the matter with me?

Purpose, purpose, purpose. I'm working and I have a schedule and with lines and notes and post-its, I am comforted as though wrapped in a blanket. Things have their place. Even me, at least for August. That's not to say it can't be changed, but it feels good to know what I'm to do at different intervals. Go here. Go there. Sleep. Work out. Smile. Nod. Argue. Laugh. Be quiet.

I've always been this strange mix between planner and dreamer, idiotically spontaneous and soul-crushing logical. I have not seen this breed before, even in me I confuse myself often. But if I don't keep me on my toes, who will? I am responsible for a moment, two jobs, moving apartments, keeping out of tangles with the ex (metaphorically speaking, mindfully speaking), talking on the phone, seeing my friends, even realizing I have more than I thought. This whole time I thought I needed more, but perhaps I need less. Of everything.

So after fleeing the country on a short jaunt, and just saying to hell with it, why not go to the Hamptons, Connecticut, Chicago for no reason at all, during the work week I am oddly calm, I don't feel thirsty or hungry all day, I sit in front of a computer and I get on the phone and I get some work done and I make notes and I take notes. It feels as good as being barefoot, which I also do, underneath my desk.

I am moving forward, the only direction as Jay-Z says (why does his rap always sound like he's about to burst into tears?). Today turns into tomorrow turns into next week turns into the end of the season and a clean house. Tidy, tidy, tidy, I am a little, story-book rodent with small hands arranging files and papers and folding blankets with satisfaction. Frog and Toad, Peter Rabbit, they had shirts and no pants and they did what they did. Rinse and repeat. I am that weird. I am that happy being neutral. To be disinterested, oh how I would love that, to not swing so wildly, to take a week and not live it like it's my last. I have opposite problems, I do not need to shake things up, I am shook up all the time, I need the wind to temper, I need the air to be still. I need to not need. I want to not want. I am meditating while typing, spilling a coffee, overturning cups of pens and papers. I can do this. If my heart can beat while I sleep, then I can write while invoking Om, damnit.

Someone crazy once told me the secret to happiness was taking it one day at a time, not thinking about the future for a moment. Nuh-uh. Lists and curlicues and status updates, a clean hand, a dirty mind, these are the things that keep me on track, I think...

I sure do think a lot. Could I turn off my brain if I tried very hard? I could, perhaps. Someone said I had a lot of energy, someone else said they couldn't be around me because I have too many ideas, someone else said they were with me to be 'along for the ride.' People say mean things. They sure do say them a lot.

I like to be alone now. This is something new. Something wonderful. Sitting in your underwear watching bad TV and eating three popsicles for dinner isn't something you can do with a boyfriend, I have realized. Bully for boyfriends, hooray for Gatorade.

And now, just move, a little ahead, bend and be flexible, get it done, tap it up, drink it in, go insane and do it again. That's all right, that's okay. Tomorrow is then, but this is today...

I'm a loon today...what else is new?

Only The Lonely

I am undeniably, awesomely, hugely lonely.

I said it.

It's like an incredible force of nature I can't stop, I'll be walking along and it will hit me--if I were to simply vanish, having never made a mark on this earth at all, who would miss me, and for how long?

It's not good to think about these things, but whenever you try not to think of something you can only think of that: over and over again. There was a time where I had a bounty of non-loneliness. That ship has sailed. My best friends have moved away or gotten married, my boyfriend went off the deep end and got into two car crashes, his therapist said he ended our relationship from the trauma of the accident, and now drinks 65 drinks a week and has no job and says he's happy (huh? I never thought I'd say this, but um, how do I be more like you? I mean in the happiness part) and tries to make out with me bi-weekly. But work on our relationship? Nope. Tell me what a harpy I am and how I made him into a shell of a man and was always going to leave him for a British musician (who never appeared, btw)? Oh yes. That happens.

This was the person I was going to settle down with? Ugh, my head hurts from hitting itself into a brick wall.

So...no man. No best friend. A handful of decent friends scattered across the country. A lot of moping. A total block in writing since our breakup (hmm more of a break down). Some reading. More moping. I went to a therapist. He said I wasn't depressed enough for drugs. But for expensive long term therapy where I talk about my childhood? Oh yeah, I'm a candidate for that. I don't want to talk about my childhood! I don't want to solve the issue of losing my teddy bear! I want to feel better about my life and I want to feel better right now! Give me a life coach, not this shlock. I'm a planner. I want an action plan. I said this to him and he looked on blankly. No, wait. He said something.

He said, "How does that make you feel?"

He said it a hundred times. I said, "Can you please help me figure out how to not have anxiety or be lonely? Maybe some suggestions of some things to do? Meditation? A vacation? Dating for sport? Joining a knitting club? How to start writing again?"

He said, "Sounds like you'd like to solve your problems. And that you'd like some tools. How does that make you feel?"

The only tool in the room was him.

That's it. I'm doing the only thing that ever works. I'm fleeing to Europe. I bought my ticket, I'm crashing on sort-of-friends-of-friends couches and I'm going to London and stopping somewhere (who knows!) on a train before I hit Amsterdam. It's done. I leave Thursday after work.

Flee therapy to cure loneliness. Let's see if it works. At least I'll have some really good stories and pictures. And it's my first crash vacation totally alone. Who will I meet? Maybe someone fun. Maybe many someones fun.

Bye bye loneliness, I'm leaving you in New York for a while. We need some space. It's not me, it's you. You be lonely for a while and see how it feels. When I'm back, we'll talk.

Of course trips mean much blogging. And writing. They always do...

I've Made A Decision

I deferred the Cali schools; I'm taking chances on the NY waitlists, I'm working on my books (in theory), I am painting (in practice), I have a good paying job and I am working on being happy.

It feels good. It feels right.

And you know what? My apartment, which I love, which is warm and cool all at once, and in a garden and feels like a nice house? It's all mine right now. Which means I work when I want, I play when I want, and I sleep in my bed alone. I take up all the covers, I sleep askew, I wake when I want to, when I'm supposed to, and while I don't yet know how to dream, maybe I know a little bit more how to be.

It's Tuesday, and it's raining but lovely, and I'm no longer counting the days, I guess I'm just living them.

It may not be a corner turned, but it's a pretty good start.

Also, lots and lots of Crystal Light Lemonade and bare feet and brunches have helped. That and I stopped going on all dates that I thought I should.

Well one guy had a five year old child and works at the airport. I think the airport was worse than the rest.

I don't know how long I will be alone, but there is something to be said for being alone, and not having to reason why. No one demands my time, except me. It's kind of wonderful.

There's oil paint on my clothes and no one is complaining. When you're alone, no one complains at all. That, I think, is a plus.

The Joy of Work

On vacation I had time to think. Too much time. I thought myself into all sorts of stress. Why was a certain thing happening? Why wasn't something else happening? Why did they need me at work so much that they had to interrupt me? Why did others need me so little in my personal life did no one miss me? Why was I obsessed with everyone else in the world?

I took a long bike ride. The winding kind. The lake was blue and the trees were green. It was hot and my bike bumped over broken asphalt on the edge of town, all the roads were white and they went on a long time, up into hills and around slivers of water. It wasn't an hour of the day, it was sun or it was rain, I was hungry or I was asleep, I was running, I was always early and quiet, quiet, quiet.

People talked to me, I talked back. People didn't talk to me, and I didn't say anything either. I read very much. I wrote very little. I thought about what I wanted in this life and I wished it. If it didn't come true right away, I kept wishing.

I'm back at work today and things feel safe. Everything is gray and it goes on a long time. I miss certain people in my life, I miss certain things. But I can't wait for them to miss me, because I have a long way to go, and I have to keep going.

I Left My Heart in San Francisco...Figuratively Speaking

Well, you were right, it was incredibly beautiful and amazing! It was like a big Brooklyn on the beach. It was spitting rain and the waves were crashing, everything was like a green jewel shot through with gray. It was incredibly romantic. And I was alone.

There was a grown-up's BBQ, an awkward glass of wine, laughing around the grill.

There was a crashing on a couch, sharing of playlists, shouting at the T.V. as we waited for the clouds to clear.

There was the hours spent with my second love, the first person I thought I'd marry, and the cold ocean between us. I thought of another life, the one I missed, could I, would I ever reclaim it? He is the only, and I mean only, friend I have in the area. And he. Is. Not. A. Friend.

At best we are neutral, are we? I wondered if he had changed and then he told me, as he reached finally for his ever-buzzing phone, that I needed to be quiet. That he had lied to his current girlfriend and I was his friend "Matt" visiting from out of town. She sounded happy on the other line, trusting. A false happiness. I know it well. That's when I stopped wondering if he had changed.

I walked around alone, had coffee by myself, jittery and with nothing to do, thumbing through the local newspaper, mentally circling all those things I would not, could not do. I was leaving in mere hours and I had done everything I could do in the time allotted. I had met new friends haphazardly, just by trying on a dress, we had been out all night, dancing in a circle, they had already called me. "Move here!" They urged. "We can see you in San Francisco."

I laughed, "You don't even know me!"

"Sure we do, why do we have to know you any more than this, we can tell."

I missed them as soon as I said goodbye. My ride to the airport was a friend in trouble, she and I do know each other and know it well, but she will have moved away by the time I arrive.

Am I running to something, or am I running away?

I got a new job this week. They will pay for 80% of my tuition if I stay in NYC. I got into three schools in California. My ex boyfriend is in California.

I got waitlisted at three schools in New York. My ex boyfriend is in New York. I love them both, want to be near them both, and dually want to be so far away, want to be alone.

Be alone at home, or somewhere all together new? Experience home like I never have, with the perfect job and finally have money and save for a year and then go out to San Francisco, when I'm an inch closer to knowing who I am, when my head is clear, when I've had one more year to work on both my novels, to finish art school once and for all, to write unencumbered?

Or give up the new job, the NY connections and my beautiful apartment and get another roommate, learn how to drive a car again (this is no small feat), and go immediately into debt?

I know, I know, I wanted so badly to go to school. But I want so badly to move with someone. Not that I can't do it alone, I just don't know if I'm quite ready. It's so fun to be single in Brooklyn, it's so comforting. I write instead of go out and I do a good job during the day and I go to the gym and I feel monastic even. I am full of indecision, as always. I could defer and work here until December and then go for a six month backpacking trip. I could.

When you're alone, you can do anything...

Lots to think about today...

School Update A Billion And Two

Waitlisted at Columbia!

Again, the waitlist queen strikes again...

That's waitlisted at all the NY schools: Columbia, NYU, Brooklyn College

In at: San Fran State and University of San Francisco

Heading to the home stretch now...go with the San Fran Schools or wait it out for my one true love, Brooklyn College?

Visiting San Fran the city (for the first time) next weekend. If I fall in love then maaaaaybe.

No clue what to do. But feeling pretty darn awesome because the superfancy magazine I work for asked me to stay on full-time for enough money that would allow me to quit all my other freelance jobs and do all my writing on my books instead as I prepare for school. AND work ends at 6 unlike all other jobs that keep going on at 1 am on a Tuesday.

Lots of things to think about today...

School Update

Gah! On the WAITLIST of my number one choice, Brooklyn College.

Will have to sit here biting my nails for a while, but the program rocks and even a waitlist is a bit of validation that maybe, someday, I might rock, too.

(Fingers crossed....)

The Last Essay I Ever Wrote For Applications

When you go do it like this, they know you're spent. 13 down, no more to go, sorry Columbia, for this:


Dear Columbia University

When I started my critical paper for entrance to your program, I began to cheat. I had in my possession a gently-worn copy of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. It’s edged in red and white, and still bears the purchase sticker from where I bought it (Borders on the Upper West Side, a steal at fifteen dollars plus tax). I adore it. But more, it was published in the past ten years, and in my genre—fiction! I told this to myself as I happily re-read on the lurching subway, fingering the pages, trying to be stoic when I felt the pangs her sentences invoked. I formulated grand plans. And then I re-read your clearly printed instructions on what we were to write.

Alas, the stories in the first three quarters of the book were not published in the last ten years, never mind written then, and so they could not count. What she wrote which I thought most spoke to me was what she wrote when she was my age, and I had a response to it all right. How she changed, and how she changed me. What it all meant. It would have made a great critical essay, in my mind.

But it’s The Dog of The Marriage that qualifies, and it is that which is pertinent to this essay, and now I realize, most pertinent to me. How to begin? With the depiction of rapes, the fear every day at being a woman, with the long shores of shuttered lake houses? With the seasons that followed, the dogs that arrived, with the husbands that left? There is endless departure, departures without permission, pervasive in her stories. Each loss flows lyrically into the next, as if each were a chapter in a well-crafted novel. A novel of loss—of love, life, youth, beauty, summer. There is sexual violence, both terrifying and thrilling. The narrator—whoever she is, Hempel, a collection of facets, her friends and my imagination—speaks the same language no matter where she arrives.

She is surrounded by people, by animals, by machines, and she is alone, with a trowel, in a man’s shirt. She is alone even in the arms of her lover as she invents a lifetime of sexual fantasies for a man who will not love in “Offertory.” She is alone as she watches the revolving door of suitors in her widowed father’s life, and when she and he argue, without words, on what time means in “The Afterlife.” She is alone as she dips the pregnancy wick into the crystal scotch glass as she recalls her favorite film and confuses who is the ghost in the movie and in her own life in “The Uninvited.” Sometimes she is irate when alone, as she is when penning the parking ticket rebuttal in “Reference #388475848-5.” Sometimes she is quiet when alone, when she remembers her mother’s death and looks upon her x-ray in the doctor’s office in “What Are The White Things?” She is on the wrong side of fifty at each moment alone. There are pets that nuzzle and boxed turtles that die on nets spread over strawberries, there are men who float in and those who she will not love. She is a competent driver, and she drives into and out of every situation, not a single one unfolds without her specific self-aware presence, and oftentimes, her actual car. She has the sensibility of a poet. There is a quiet suspension of disbelief here, those who are not the narrator speak in near-couplets (and she often turns a phrase on its head) and time is fluid—we never seem to start at the beginning. Often we’re at the end as in the title story, or in the middle in “Jesus is Waiting.” In “Memoir,” we begin nowhere, in void. And of course, that is precisely the point. Hempel may not have invented the mantra “every word counts,” but she is the gold standard in this collection. White space frightens some writers. Others must see the page the way a sculptor sees marble, and carve out from one block of it. If roughness, incompleteness remains, that is part of the whole. It’s tempting to point towards greater metaphor here, naturally, about life, but for respect for Hempel, and your time, I won’t try to make it. The Dog of The Marriage, however blunt, does not make me, the reader, scared of this inevitable time in a woman’s life. I sigh when reading it. Sometimes I want more than anything to be old and full of stories, which is a strange thing perhaps. Something that is rare, and that this work does.

As for how she does it, I understand that is the point of a proper critical essay. Also, not to use “I”. I was taught the critical essay should read, “The writer’s purpose is to do X through Y and accomplishes it using Z. Here are the number of ways in which it is done. Here is the symbolism. Here is God. Here is greed.” But, when speaking of Hempel, how can one do this in an ordinary way? In Rick Moody’s introduction he asserts, “Who gives a shit how long the book takes,” and now, here I am, cursing in my essay. It’s entirely wrong. But it is my response, my honest one. Hempel writes tightly—her characters are so compelling it’s as if the words aren’t even there, and yet, it’s all about the words, too. The sentences, as Moody says. She repeats, how she repeats so many things! And yet, it’s all over in a flash, a novel in stories, and it was short and it was all about longing. It was masterful, and it was heartbreaking. I had the idea that while writing this I’d somehow emulate her style. I’d write, critiquing Amy Hempel is like…and I would say something multi-layered and clever and just end there. Without the summation in words. But she does what I cannot. I don’t know how she does it. I realize that she does, and I see where and when. How to do it myself, I hope to learn in your program. So I’ll end my response with her words. The last in the collection, on the last page. “Unimprovable,” he says.

If only the same could be said for this essay.

One Holiday and Three Applications Down

The turkey, parsnip puree and cranberry mojitos were flowing but it all passed in a joyful blur for me as I arrived bedraggled and zombie-d out, hair a mess, sweater covered in lint, my jeans sagging and my posture slumped. When I got to Connecticut to join in on the holiday festivities (which were marvelous but it took me the entire time to unhunch my shoulders), I had just completed a killer week, ending with the fact that I had essentially completed three applications for grad school! Provided that they weren't lost in the mail (my greatest fear) or that I wrote across the front "BOOGER" in my complete-the-application madness.

But still...

Three down! Only NINE more to go! But the first ones are the hardest ones--now my personal statement is as perfect as it's going to get, and my essays are all sketched out (except for one for Columbia that I can see myself completing badly at the last minute). The writing sample itself, which is 90% of the application's worth (so I hear) will not change another line, word or even comma. If it does, I might just die.

So I sent in the completed MFA and or Fellowship applications to:

UC-San Diego
UC-Irvine
and Stanford--which I looked at one last time AFTER I handed it in and saw a typo on the personal statement. Noooo! Can't change it now. All are due tomorrow so they were done last week. Next round is due December 15th, but I hope to have a few due beyond that out by then.

In the meantime I will be squirreling away in the recesses of my cozy apartment and using the cubes at work to furiously download PDFs on a faster computer than my own (after work hours of course!) and if all goes well, I will submit three applications per week until the week of Christmas. Then I will be done. And on to perfecting my query letter and getting my completed novel out there, starting a new but pretty hard temporary magazine job, and continuing my music writing. Oh, and writing that new book too. *Sigh*

Are you a person who needs to be busy or feels like you are wasting your life? I am. Sometimes it's fun, but on a rainy day like today it's a little exhausting. Perhaps it's that leftover turkey, or perhaps because I had two assignments due over the weekend so have not officially taken a day completely off from work in months, or that I'm working on my next round of applications now, but I am sleepy and wish for my cloud-like bed and a cup of cocoa instead of this lukewarm bitter coffee and piles upon piles of paper.

Sending good vibes out to you on this Monday, hoping to get some back. Boy, do I need it!

What came first: The Book or the MFA?

Story Editor is done reading the book, and has given me her notes, and they (and she) are amazing! They are all super-positive and wonderful and really insightful, and it's really cool to see what complicated ideas I've pulled off and which ones have...well, thrown me off.

She has pointed out what I've known all along, the first chapter needs to be different. The good thing is that I have all the first chapter material just chopped up in the current first chapter and framed differently. So it's a rewrite of the first 25 pages or so, which at one point in my life seemed like such a long and difficult thing to do (oh the days of 15 page papers, I would take you back in a second!), but now is no problem. If only I could get my priorities straight...whip the book into final perfection (it's SO CLOSE) and get it to the agents...or work on my MFA applications, which also have due dates, and their own considerations.

So paralyzed was I by which one to focus on, that today I did the unthinkable, and instead focused on work for money (boo, hiss!) and then skipped the gym (double hiss! but I'm still sore from Friday's killer workout). Bad dog.

But tomorrow I will have a sit-down about my personal statement, and the good Samaritan who is looking over my writing samples with fresh eyes to ensure I didn't write "COCK" in huge letters on it somewhere (hmmm...maybe I should do that anyway, and call it "experimental writing" and send it to Brown..zing!) And if this good Samaritan has done what he was asked not to, which is to say anything about making it longer or shorter after I crafted every single word so that it fit the maximum length of the minimum requirement for every single school (this was so hard), I will rise our of the ashes and fly screaming for the blood of his young. If not, he gets a card. (Do the right one, Dave!)

Anyway, going a little insane over here. That's a good thing for "creatives", right? RIGHT?

The Editor's Note: Quote of the Day

The line-editing is just about done, and now the story/character/big-picture editor is looking at the book.

She usually takes three weeks (which is incredibly fast) and said so for my 331 page novel. But now that she's reading it, I'm different. She got it last Friday, and she thinks she'll be done next Monday. That's just over a week! I'm tearing my hair out (she is an award-winning novelist and is always right on point) in anticipation of her notes.

But then...she emailed me a quick update and it was this:

"Just so you know, I'm reading and it's wonderful."

Be still my beating heart...

Let's not get too excited yet, she's still got over 200 pages to go...but if she likes that, then I'll make tweaks with her suggestion, and then...actually start submitting it to agents. My God!

Almost Published

Well, at a fine literary magazine I am published, anyway.

Still working on that book, but in the meantime, check out the journal and let me know what you think!

Finally!

It's time for some good news on the writing front, and here it is, from Dave King, one of the best editors in the entire world!

WHAT WORKS: Oh, nearly everything, but perhaps this sums it up best: I’m a middle-aged editor living in the Massachusetts countryside, where most of my social life takes place at either the library, the local hardware store, or the town dump. (Actually, the Ashfield town dump is probably not what you’d imagine.) I was still drawn in by the coming-of-age story of a young woman who moves among the upper echelons of Manhattan’s monied wastrels.

Of course, she moves in other circles as well, and one of the things that drew me in was your near-perfect pitch for character creation. Becks, the Ruffians, Connor and Kay, Alfred, even minor characters like Stewart and Blaine are all beautifully, clearly developed. And likable, which is difficult to do with the more shallow, self-centered characters like Becks or Kyle. (You do a very good poor little rich girl.) The relationship between A. and her mother – especially the scene on the way home after A. hits the deer – was beautifully done, as was the love scene between A. and Connor or the scene between A. and Kay in the amusement park.

Then there’s A. herself. From the start, you’ve captured (at least as far as this middle-aged, Massachusetts editor can tell) the fear, the lost hopelessness, the confusion of a young girl’s coming of age. You’ve also resisted the temptation to simply spin generic banalities about growing up and becoming an individual. The longstanding tension between A. and her mother, the way their relationship revolves around money, the secrets her mother has been harboring all of her life, all give concreteness and reality to A.’s transition into maturity.

There are a lot of little strengths as well. You manage your plot exceptionally well for someone writing such a character-driven story. Both the news (SPOILERS THAT I'VE TAKEN OUT!) well-crafted surprises, and you keep the tension up until the end. Your descriptions are vivid and visceral, with some very nicely turned phrases (“Beck’s father was a boldfaced name,” for instance). Your dialogue is crisp and feels authentic.

In short, you have written a remarkably strong novel.


Yaaaay! No rest for the wicked, am still working on many projects. But this gets me ever-closer getting an agent. Fingers crossed!

Nerd Alert: Fun With Words

I'm not one to post others' words much, but after class last night, I just had to re-post this. These provided me with a grande-sized shot of adrenaline and I had to share my favorites.

Probably standard fare for any regular "how not to" lecture, these did not, and I figure, will not ever cease to make me laugh...

Drumroll please...

"Worst analogies ever written in a high school essay (I do doubt this in many cases, because some of these are just too great...)

1. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

2. Her hair glistened in the rain like nose hair after a sneeze.

3. Her eyes were like two brown circles with black dots in the center.

4. Bob was as perplexed as a hacker who means to access T:flw.quid5528.com/aaakk/ch@ung but gets T:\flw.quidaaakk/ch@ung by mistake. (We agreed this one would be perfect for a tech presentation at work, then again, none of us is a techie.)

5. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

6. Her date was pleasant enough, but she knew that if her life was a movie this guy would be buried in the credits as something like "Second Tall Man".

7. John and Mary had never met. They were like two humming birds who had also never met."

I can't stop laughing at these. I want more. If anyone can help me, I'd be eternally grateful.

More from the Children's Book

Sorry! I am in 3 classes and have two editing jobs and am generally running around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to learn how to be an adult and a writer and both of these in this economy. Here's a scene of what I've been working on, my children's book. In the meantime, I have given myself a reading list:

1. Island of the Blue Dolphins
2. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
3. Hatchet
4. A Wrinkle In Time

Any other suggestions??

From the book:

In the fifth grade, it works like this: Mrs. Tropiano’s our main teacher and we sit in her classroom most of the day. It’s decorated with samples of our best cursive penmanship and a few papers that earned gold stars and there are at least three of mine up there. In the back there’s a couch for reading, and if you finish a test before everyone else, you can sit in it and lie back on cushions of worn-out corduroy. But when it comes to special subjects, we’ve got different teachers for that, and we leave Mrs. Tropiano for them and head to the gymnasium, the art room or the music room. Today is Wednesday and that means music.

Dad says don’t use the word hate, so I won’t. Miss Peroski is our music instructor, and she’s a skinny one, she looks like if Olive Oil stepped right out of the television. She’s got long black hair that’s plaited into a thick dark rope that reaches her bottom. Today she’s feeling kooky so she greets us by playing a recorder as we shuffle in and is smiling a big toothy grin. When she sees that I’m last, she says, “Katie Burnett, don’t dilly dally!”. Some kids laugh, and I can’t tell if it’s at me or Miss Peroski because we both have something to be embarrassed about.

“Everybody take your seats please,” Miss Peroski says as she twirls around in a bright Indian skirt and long feathered earrings. She is the only woman I’ve ever seen who dresses like every day is a special holiday and it occurs to me that I wouldn’t mind seeing her on the Fourth of July. Maybe she’d have on a big wedding dress made out of a patchwork of flags, a swirl of red, white and blue and a crown of sparklers. And the sparklers would shoot off her head like rockets and she’d still be dancing around completely unaware, with her guitar strapped to her shoulder and telling all the dogs to go on and scoot, even when the little fires on her head started lighting up the gravel around her.

I laugh at this, and it’s a big mistake.

“Thank you for volunteering first, Miss Burnett,” Miss Peroski waves her recorder like it’s a wand and she summons me to the front of the room.

“Ooooh,” goes the rest of the class, like a chorus. I feel the blush creep into my face and at this moment I wish I could bolt out the door in a flash, fast as Henry.

“Miss Burnett, we’re waiting,” Miss Peroski says and I look at her long braid and am again reminded that I have never had the discipline to grow mine past my ears, and even if I did, it be as fine as a baby’s and could never be braided.

I walk to the front of the green blackboard and there are notes and treble clefs on it in white chalk, but it might as well be Chinese, I can read it but that’s where it ends.

“Miss Burnett, can you tell me what this note is?” She points to the board. I know from memorization that I can decide between “All Cows Eat Grass” for the spaces, meaning the notes are “A, C, E, G” or “Good Boys Don’t Fight Anyone” which means “G, B, D, F, A.” Don’t as me why G and A are on there twice, it’s got something to do with the bass clef versus the treble.

“G,” I say.

“Very good,” Miss Peroski blows the note on her recorder. It sounds like a rush of wind through a drainpipe. She opens her mouth in a little oval and repeats the sound perfectly, “La, la, la.”

She smiles. “Now you try it.”

The back of my neck is itchy and I turn from her and look at the class. Rachel’s looking at me and mouths, go on and do it! and she touches her thumb and finger to create the A-OK sign we make to each other in class when we need a boost. Everyone else is looking around the room, at the glockenspiel and at the African drums, and I’m sure they’re all thinking what I’m thinking, if only we could have our bongo circle today instead of this garbage.

I clear my throat, it’s something that Dad and Henry do, and it makes their voices sound loud and strong once they’re done, but on me it’s more like a squeaky mouse with laryngitis.

“Kathryn are you feeling all right?” Miss Peroski says, and though it’s kind I bristle a little because I don’t like the name Kathryn one bit—Kate or Katie suits me better.

“Pardon me,” I say, and I look at the big ticking clock on the wall above the door, as if it’s pushed forward a whole forty-five minutes and I’m scot-free. No such luck, there’s still a good thirty-eight minutes to go. “My throat’s not feeling up to snuff.”

“Your throat sounds perfectly lovely to me, now go on,” she says and sings once more, “La, la, la!” It sounds like a silver bird.

I shake out my hands, stamp my feet a little, anything to shake a silver bird from my throat, I give it a go, “Lo, lo, lo.”

It’s abominable. Worse than I could even imagine. It was not a joyful noise, as Mom says. My silver bird is a big fat turkey. Some of the kids look like they can’t believe such a sound has come from me.

Miss Peroski looks as though I stole her feather earrings and now am wearing them right in front of her. “I see someone hasn’t been practicing. Keep forging ahead, Kathryn,” and she dismisses me to my seat.

“Miss Peroski, I have too been practicing,” I say, and it comes out of my mouth very high and sharp and it surprises even me.

“I’ve never known you to be a liar, let’s not start now,” she says, and she points to Rachel. “Miss Murphy, you’re next.”

“I’m not a liar, I swear,” I say but Miss Peroski is already asking for Rachel to point out the notes, and she does not point out the right note, but when Miss Peroski plays it on the recorder she sings it back perfectly, and it sounds like an angel would.

And I think, how much has she studied, and that it couldn’t be more than me, and yet here she is, the sound out of her is pure and shiny and it is beautiful and suddenly it comes to me. She has never studied the way I have, and it doesn’t matter at all. She can sing and I cannot, and that’s as complex as it gets.

Funny

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

Here are the 2009 winners:


1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.


2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.


3. Intaxication : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.


4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.


5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.


6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.


7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high


8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.


9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.


10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)


11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.


12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.


13. Glibido : All talk and no action.


14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.


15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.


16. Beelzebug (n.) : Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.


17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.



The Washington Post has also published the winning submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for common words.



And the winners are:


1. Coffee , n. The person upon whom one coughs.


2. Flabbergasted , adj. Appalled by discovering how much weight one has gained.


3. Abdicate , v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.


4. Esplanade , v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.


5. Willy-nilly , adj. Impotent.


6. Negligent , adj. Absentmindedly answering the door when wearing only a nightgown.


7. Lymph , v. To walk with a lisp.


8. Gargoyle , n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.


9. Flatulence , n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone who has been run over by a steamroller.


10. Balderdash , n. A rapidly receding hairline.


11. Testicle , n. A humorous question on an exam.


12. Rectitude , n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.


13. Pokemon , n.. A Rastafarian proctologist.


14. Oyster , n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.


15. Frisbeetarianism , n. The belief that, after death, the soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.

**Shout-out to BT for providing, thank you!

Everyone is Pregnant

Is there something* in the air? No less than four of my good friends are pregnant. Of course these fine young women are off married in other states. Is this a suburban** vs. city thing? Or is it just the whole world against NYC thing?

Are we all destined to continue a prolonged adolescence in New York where we don't want to get married until 30 if even then or have babies until 35+?

So many questions remain unanswered. Like how they're figuring out to pay for school for their unborn, and how I'm trying to figure out how to pay for school***...for myself****.


*My choice not to use "semen" instead of "something" proves that I am actually mature.

**My choice to use "suburban" even those these lovely girls live in Seattle, Philly and Jersey proves that I have finally succumbed to the wave of pretension around me, and therefore am not mature, and am simply, a pompous jackass who thinks NYC is the end-all be-all of the world.

***My choice to apply to schools everywhere except New York proves that I am less of a jackass than previously thought.

****Less of a jackass, maybe. But no less selfish....hey no one's going to make my life cool for me. It's up to me to do that now. And you know, I promise when I have a baby I'll spoil it rotten. Until then, there are plenty (about to be) around to teach me how.

Unspecial

Excerpt from my newest book...for kids (some adult themes are explored, btw)...

Today I turned ten and guess what I got? A cake full of mayonnaise, that’s what.

Mom’s gone on another site dig, so Dad had to make the cake and let me tell you, he’s basically the worst at cooking. Whoever said the greatest chefs were men never met my lunch. When Dad makes my sandwiches there’s never any mayonnaise, just the baloney and the bread. So what’s with the mayonnaise in the cake, I say when I blow out the candles. He says try it.

Henry makes a face and takes a pretend bite when Dad’s watching me cause when it’s your birthday everyone pays you too much attention and stares when you eat. Henry’s too old to warrant Dad making a sandwich. Henry gets money instead. He’s in seventh grade so he’s at middle school. He gets to have a really big locker that he’s always forgetting the combination to. I’d never do that.

“Mmmm,” I say and just lick the frosting. Trails of smoke from the candles are swimming all around Dad’s face. I must have blown them to the side.

“You didn’t try it,” Dad says, and sighs.

So I take a bite. It doesn’t taste like mayonnaise. It tastes like cake. Maybe a little burnt, but it’s chocolate so it’s hard to tell. “Where’d it go?”

Dad beams like he’s won the lottery and we can all go live in Hawaii. “We were out of eggs and then I thought, what’s mayonnaise except oil and eggs? Two ingredients on the back of the cake box are oil and eggs, and here I had both, already mixed!”

I want to interrupt that my birthday was no time to play around, this was the most important thing I’ll eat all day, but I don’t. Dad’s a biomedical engineer, which is just a fancy label for scientist, and he loves breaking down and building up things. He thinks didactically. I forget what it means, but I suppose it’s an answer to some question I never asked.

So here I am, eating the cake and still Henry won’t take a bite. He doesn’t like what he can’t see. Dad loves that about Henry, says it means he’s a verifiable brain-in-training. I said Henry’s an idiot, and my supporting evidence was people can’t see planets moving or see evolution. That’s just a leap of faith. Henry said I got it backwards, as usual, and waved a book in my face, The Beak of the Finch. He said Charles Darwin saw it because he was patient, unlike me. I go, I’d read that book myself just to shove it in Henry’s face if it weren’t so freakin’ boring.

Dad said don’t say freakin’, it’s unladylike. Another thing Henry gets to do that I don’t. I’m supposed to become a lady and he gets to be a man, which aside from not being able to cook seems a lot better because you don’t have to wear lipstick and no one judges you by how big your bra is. Dad says talking about a bra before I need one is also unladylike.

You’re exasperating, I said to Dad, because he always says it to me. He said don’t push it, so I didn’t because, you know, he was making that face. He was making that same face to Henry about the cake so Henry took a bite really fast.

“Hey this isn’t half bad,” he says, and with his mouth full too. And then he keeps eating, just wouldn’t stop eating it. His piece was gone in like, a millisecond, I swear. I count in my head. At that rate, the whole thing would be gone in one point two minutes.

“Don’t pig out! Leave some, I want to eat this all week!” I tell him.

I’m starting to regret that my birthday party isn’t until next Saturday. You can’t have a party on Sunday night, not with your friends cause no one will come, so we’re having our little party as a family. Plus the bowling alley would be more fun on the weekends. Rachel and Andrea and Sammy have never eaten a mayonnaise cake, to my recollection. They would have told me if they did.

“I can make more,” Dad says, probably as a cue for us to pipe down.

So we all keep eating it and I don’t say out loud how I wished Mom were here to try it. She’s missed my birthday before—she’s an archeologist and is basically always gone—but I guess I thought she’d be here for my graduation into double digits, since today I turned ten. That’s a big number, especially now that I’m in fifth grade, the last grade before middle school. It seems important to have your mom around for that kind of a thing. But then again, I wouldn’t have had a mayonnaise cake if she were here. So I didn’t say anything about Mom missing the cake out loud. If she were here, it couldn’t have been mayonnaise cake at all. That’s what Dad calls an impossibility.