What I don’t think people realize is that I don’t even read the comments on the feminist men post, or the peasant skirt post, or the Ground Zero post anymore, because I wrote them five years ago, and I just don’t fucking care what people think anymore.
What I myself have realized is that I may have to write another 75,000 word draft and throw that one away too before I get to the one that works.
(* Not National Memoir Writing Month)
Last I posted, I’d just finished writing a 75,000 word draft
of a novel during National Novel Writing Month, using the ABC method of
writing: Apply Butt to Chair. I was working on the second draft, when I
realized that real life events were once again telling me that I had to write
another memoir. Because I’d been reminded that it was possible for me
to write 75,000 words in a month, and because it had felt so good to do so, I
decided to do it again.
Before Nanowrimo, I’d forgotten how much you have to write – and how much you
have to scrap – in order to get to the point. It took me a year to write the
first draft of my first book, which was a series of interconnected true stories
about my life from the ages of seven to thirty-four called HOW I BECAME THE GIRLBOMB. When I finished the manuscript – it was about 75,000 words, as I
recall – I tried to get it published, but nobody really cared about how whoever
became whatever. “The shelter stuff, though,” they thought was
interesting.
So I scrapped the whole 350 page manuscript, and started
over with a new draft, a straight narrative covering the shelter stuff. I was
only able to use maybe six pages of the first draft in the second. But I had to
write all 350 of them to get there.
I attended a workshop with Stephen Elliott the other week.
Stephen is the author of two of my favorite books, HAPPY BABY and THE ADDERALL DIARIES; it was profoundly helpful to listen to him talk about how he wrote
them. He said, “You write a ton of pages, and then you cut ninety percent of
it.”
This is such great and liberating advice: Just write a bunch
of shit, and then pan it for gold. It doesn’t have to be good; you’re going to
change it anyway. Write a lot, because writing begets writing — the more you write, the easier it gets, and the better you get at it. The more hours I write, the more inspired I become. I used to think that sentence only worked in reverse. Write so much that you wear yourself out, and you
can’t perform any of your old, adorable tricks anymore. It may take you 350 pages to
clear your throat, but at least you will have found your voice.
Anyway, here I am again, sitting on a pile of pages,
scrapping them all. Putting aside one hundred percent of what I’ve written,
trusting that the top ten percent will creep back in. I started the second
draft on Tuesday; already I can feel how different this draft will be, how much
improved. And I couldn’t have got here without going there.
So I wrote a 75,000 word draft of a novel in the month of November, which was National Novel Writing Month (or Nanowrimo, as the inventors of the event have called it). Nanowrimo is a challenge to write 50,000 words, or 1667 words per day, every day, between November 1 through November 30; because I am a full-time writer, I decided to push for 75,000 — nanoandahalfwrimo. I finished the month with 75,956 words — 167 single spaced pages of pure first draft.
I’ve been writing for most of my adult life, and teaching writing for a few years. I didn’t think I had anything new to learn about the craft of writing. I was wrong. I learned more about writing during the month of November than I learned in two years of graduate school (where a professor once told me my work was too emotionally intense and needed — a direct quote — “more blather”).
I learned that sitting in the chair and forcing yourself to write long past the point where you feel inspired can actually work. There were many days when I sat there in front of the blank page with the blinking cursor — a familiar situation — wondering, “What the hell do I write now?” — a familiar question. Instead of succumbing to the idea that I had nothing to say, and that I should go away and think about it until I knew what the next thing to write should be, I forced myself to just write something, anything. And I did.
I learned not to overthink decisions, to just make them, and know that I could change them later. A character who was 28 when I started writing about her on November 3 suddenly aged and became 41 by November 12; another character lost ten years of her life. Other characters appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, just showed up on the page and started speaking and acting. Apparently, if you make your hands move, your brain will follow.
I also learned how much you can write in an hour, as long as you don’t go back and reread and try to polish things. I used to think, what’s the point, I only have an hour between appointments, I’ll skip the office today. Now I know, I can write three pages in an hour. I also know that I can get up an hour earlier in the morning if I have to, that I can stay up an hour later. I remembered what it was like to work hard.
And I learned not to stop during a first draft, not to reread what I’d written the day before, not to try to polish things or make them sound good, just to open the faucet and let it go. If you stop and reread, you become self-conscious, and the minute you become self-conscious, you slow down. The time for self-consciousness is the second draft. And man, am I self-conscious now.
Because this first draft is a mess. Written in no chronological order, just chunks of disconnected scenes floating around a nucleus of an idea; abrupt beginnings and endings to scenes; dialogue that’s so on-the-nose it might as well be Kleenex. Paragraphs like this, without line breaks or proper punctuation, where even I can barely tell who’s speaking:
Nothing I do is right anymore. She wants to be reassured.
When has that ever been his role? Did he ever promise to be the guy who
reassures people? He sighs. I never said that. But you indicate that. You
indicate it all the time. Abigail, you’re making things up. Don’t negate my reality.
He can barely keep his eyes from rolling. See? You’re rolling your eyes at me.
I am most certainly not rolling my eyes at you. I am trying to determine what
you’re trying to say here, and how I can possibly convince you out of something
you’ve decided is real. You could convince me by acting like you like me every
once in a while. That’s neither accurate nor fair, he says. I gave you keys
to my apartment; isn’t that an indicator of how I feel? I’ve introduced you to
my father. I’ve told you, I’ve never had a relationship like this one before,
and yet you keep telling me that it’s not enough. I’m starting to feel like I’m
the one who can’t do anything right. His father’s genes in him, he would have made
an excellent lawyer.
See? A mess. But better a mess than a nothing. Because you can clean up a mess, but you can’t do anything to a nothing.
(That doesn’t even make sense, but now that I’m all un-self-conscious from Nanowrimo, I don’t care.)
Got a comment on this blog the other day from a reader named
Lola, who wanted to know if I’ve heard from Sam since the book was published.
It’s a question that comes up often enough – people want to know what happened
to Sam, if she’s okay, if I ever found out anything more about her family, if
she ever got better. They’re not happy with the indeterminate ending of the
book; they want an epilogue, a where-are-they-now.
We all do.
I have not heard from Sam since the last conversation
recorded in the book, when I called her program, she answered, she said she
couldn’t talk, and she hung up on me. That was late January of 2006 – three
years ago. Nothing since then. Well, almost nothing.
It’s mid-August, 2006. I’m working on the book, even as the
events are still way too fresh to comprehend, ignoring my own advice about
memoir writing: “You have to have the perspective of time.” I’d like to have
the perspective of time, but I’d also like to make my deadline, and I’d really
like to be done with the whole thing, to purge it in one painful heave and have
it over with. Writing the book is almost as bad as living it, I’m discovering;
every day, I pack up and go to the office and stir it all up, conjure up
horrible feelings and detail terrible mistakes and dwell on them. Sometimes, I
shake with rage, and I have to shut the laptop and go into the kitchen for a
while, read the bulletin board, rifle through the candy bowl. Other times, I
have to lie down on the sofa and shut my eyes.
Then comes the day when I am working on the scene where Sam
shows up battered and bruised, and she tells me she’s been in a fight with a
pimp. She’s got a shiner, and her hands are fluttering, because she had to stab
him in the hollow of his throat with a pen, and she doesn’t know what happened
after that because she ran. And I call the cops and try to calm her down and
try to calm myself down, all the while freaking out over the idea that she may
have just killed somebody in hand-to-hand combat.
And of course, as I’m writing the scene, I realize all over
again that there was no pimp, and there was no fight; that the bruises were
self-inflicted; that she was lying to my face, and laughing at me the entire
time for being such a gullible simp.
So I’m writing this scene, and I’m reliving it again, and I
really think I’m going to lose my shit. I can’t believe how badly I was duped,
how humiliated I feel, how much she cost me, and how much more she could have
cost me if she hadn’t been unmasked. I’m so fucking angry at her; I hate her. I
hate the girl I’ve been calling Samantha Dunleavy, and it’s high time I did
something about it.
I pack up the laptop and I head home, fuming like a steam
engine, choo choo up Sixth Avenue, gaining speed with every step. That’s it –
I’m going to unmask her. I’m calling her program, where she’s busy wasting
everyone’s time with her bullshit stories, and I don’t care if it gets her
thrown out – I’m blowing up her spot. As a matter of fact, I hope she gets
thrown out; she’s there on the taxpayers’ dime right now, and I’m not ready to
pay another red cent for her to sit around spinning lies and smirking at how
stupid we all are.
I get home, fling my bag onto the sofa, and grab my
notepad with the number to her program, stabbing the buttons on my phone with
vigor. A young man answers, “Hello, [Program Name and Branch], how can I help
you.”
“Hi, I’m looking for Luwanda, please.” I’ve tried calling
her counselor before, without success, but today, I am not taking no for an
answer.
“Luwanda’s at [a different branch] now. Do you want the
number there?”
“Yes, please.” I write down the number, and thank him. “But
actually, I was looking for Samantha Dunleavy – is she there, please?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s at [the other branch] too.”
“Great,” I say. “Thanks again.”
And then I hang up and stare at the phone. He just told me
where Sam is – she’s still at the program, just at a different branch. So she’s
been there for nine or ten months now, which means she’s happy enough there,
and she’s not currently in the hospital, which is also good news. And the fact
that he told me where she is, rather than saying he couldn’t give me any
information – that’s the most telling fact of all. If she were still a client,
he’d have had to say, “I’m sorry, I can’t confirm whether she’s here or not,”
or he’d have been violating the privacy policy. But he gave me the branch and
the number to reach her. Which indicates to me that she’s now on staff.
Sure, and why shouldn’t she be? Many program graduates go on
to join the staff. Sam had probably graduated after six months in treatment,
and they’d probably hired her. She’s brilliant and sensitive – a perfect staff
member, in that respect – and it makes sense that she wouldn’t have wanted to
leave the program when her time was up. After all, it’s a safe place, separate
from the rest of society, where she’s established a persona that’s working for
her – never mind that it’s all bullshit. She’s happy where she is, and she’s a
success.
So I leave her alone. I don’t call the new branch, and I
don’t ask for Luwanda, and I don’t ask for her supervisor, and I certainly
don’t ask for Sam. I just tuck the phone number into my files, mull over what I
think I’ve learned, and leave it at that.
That was two and a half years ago, and I haven’t attempted
to reach her since then. I don’t know if she’s still at the program – my guess
is that she’s moved on, but I haven’t tried to confirm that. I don’t even know
if my original thesis, that she’d graduated and joined the staff, was correct.
Maybe whoever answered the phone was just lazy, confused, or a jerk; maybe she
was still a client, and he violated her privacy; maybe she was long gone and he
was mistaken about her whereabouts. Maybe he was just blowing me off. I never
heard from her parents again, and never tried to contact them; Maria hasn’t
heard anything, nor has she tried to make contact.
Again, my guess is that she moved on from the treatment
program at some point – maybe she was exposed, or maybe she just got bored, but
I don’t think she could stay in one place for more than a year or so; that
wasn’t her MO. I would guess that she has not stopped manufacturing illnesses;
I would also conjecture that she’s in bad physical shape right now, whether
she’s in the hospital or just at large. Her organs had been severely damaged,
and I doubt she gave them much of a rest. In fact, she may have succumbed to
the side effects of her disease, though somehow I doubt that too. Something
tells me she’s still out there, doing what she does.
Obviously, I hope that one day I’ll hear from her, or from
someone who knows her, and that the mystery will be solved. We’ll finally learn
what happened to her after she left my life; we’ll even learn the truth about
her family, and what (if anything) might have happened in her early years to
provoke such a disorder. I don’t really believe that this will happen, but I
hope. And I hope that, wherever she is, she’s overcome her true illness and
learned to be happy and at peace.
Again, I don’t believe. But I hope.
This Sunday, February 15, I’ll be reading at 7pm at
Bluestockings Books (172 Allen St. just below Stanton St.) for the “Love and
Marriage” benefit, in support of the National Center for Lesbian Rights and
their fight for marriage equality. I’ll be reading with a few other writers,
including Adam Haslett, author of You Are Not A Stranger Here, and if you come
and give the suggested donation, I’ll write you a personalized haiku! E.g.:
Dana, a love song
Strums siren’s harmonies on
Her guitar-shaped heart
Or:
Lana’s open arms
Semaphore safety under
Beam of reckless smile
As a hopelessly straight person, I am most honored to be
included in this effort to help overturn Prop 8 in California, to prevent
similar measures from taking hold in other states, and to promote the right to
legal marriage for same-sex couples. Though I refer to Bill as “my husband,” we
remain unmarried domestic partners, and will do so until all of our friends and
family have the right to marry the partners they choose. But as soon as marriage
equality hits Florida, you know we’re planning a legal wedding – in Disney
World, bien sur! Because getting married at Disney is possibly the gayest thing
imaginable.
Then on Wednesday, February 18 at 7pm I’m reading at the
Mixer series at Cakeshop (152 Ludlow St. between Stanton and Rivington Sts.)
with Rob Sheffield, author of Love is a Mix Tape, and musical guest Alison of
Huff This. I’m hoping to debut a selection from the new piece I’ve been working
on, entitled “All of My Ex-Boyfriends Grovel for My Forgiveness.” What can I
say – when I don’t know what to write, I look for subjects that inspire me.
And on Friday, March 13 at 8:30, I’ll be storytelling at the
Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art (17th Street and 7th Avenue) for the Talkingstick series, with hosts Rick Patrick and Master Lee. No
idea what I’ll be reading here, as the hosts ask that participating artists
choose a work from the museum and write something inspired by it. So expect
something along the lines of “Dude, That Statue of Buddha Has Way Big Ears.”
(The beginning of a new piece I'm working on, still in progress…)
It was just after noon on Friday, September 14, and I was on
the uptown 6 train, on my way to break into my ex-boyfriend’s apartment. I’d
called his office from a payphone on the platform at Union Square to make sure
he was at work; as soon as the receptionist confirmed his presence and offered
to connect me, I hung up and boarded the train. I still had a copy of his keys,
which I’d taken the time to duplicate before returning after our breakup three
months before, so I wasn’t really going to break in. I was just going to enter,
and look around, and maybe take some things, if I felt like it.
Downtown, the city stank like death, a sour, burnt, metallic
smell shrouding the streets, a grainy photocopied picture of my downstairs
neighbor affixed to our front door: Missing: Avnish Patel. We were in shock – I say we, though there was no
more “we” in my life; there was only me and my cats, and Ron Siegal, the comic
who’d been crashing on my couch for the past six weeks. Ron was ten years older
than me, neurotic and solipsistic, as comics are; we were recent acquaintances
– Platonic, though far from ideal. He was newly sober again, after a year-long
bender following thirteen years of sobriety; I was newly single again, after a
four and a half year relationship following several other stupid,
self-destructive relationships. We were both in detox, both lonely, both
inclined to stay up until five in the morning after some shitty comedy show,
eating ice cream and gossiping about comics we knew in common. I would smoke a
joint or two, he would jump on my computer and type ALL CAPS MESSAGES to
nineteen-year-old girls off Craigslist. The sun would come up, he’d retire to
the couch, and I’d go into my bedroom and fall into bed, if not sleep.
You were there that Tuesday morning, wherever you were, so
I’ll spare you the details of what you already know. Our phone rang around 9
a.m.; a nineteen-year-old girl from Craigslist jabbering into the answering
machine. I was inclined to sleep through it, but Ron woke up and roused me.
Something big was happening. I got the gist from CNN, but I couldn’t believe it
until I stumbled downstairs in my flip flops and pajamas, stepped onto the
sidewalk, watched the streams of people walking up Fourth Avenue covered in
dust, bleeding from cuts, dazed; the buildings burning, black smoke pouring
into the blue, blue sky. I had my camera with me, and two teenage boys made a
lazy grabbing motion as they passed. “Watch that camera,” one said. “There’s
gonna be riots.” I went back inside the building, and while I was riding the
elevator upstairs, the second tower collapsed.
I did not shower. I dressed, and went straight to the
grocery store with my granny cart, filled it with canned goods, cat food, and
bottled water. I picked up a pint of ice cream for me and Ron, though I felt
sure that the electricity was soon to fail; who knew what else was on its way.
My heart beat loud and urgent in my chest; everything felt both impossibly
foreign and incredibly immediate, even as the aisles were empty, the muzak
playing Carly Simon like it was any other Tuesday. The cashier looked at me
with big eyes, mumbled have a nice day
as she handed me the receipt. Thanks, I said dumbly. You too.
The phones were out, so I emailed my dad in New Jersey, my
brother in New Rochelle: We’re all right,
I wrote, though there was no more we in my life. Ron had drifted out to his
favorite café on MacDougal Street, a place where sober people sat around all
day, drinking coffee and talking about the emotional abuse they’d
experienced. It was just me and my cats, and then Tia and Jason buzzed from
downstairs, because they didn’t have cable and their TV was out and they wanted
to know what was being reported on the news. Jason was an anarchist, or an
anti-capitalist, or something; he was almost excited by the events of the
morning, leaning forward with his forearms on his thighs, his mouth open
slightly. Tia wanted to go home and walk the dog.
So I
was alone again, with the cats, and the sounds of the sirens, and every channel
on TV showing what we could hear and smell and feel for ourselves: the end of the world. I checked my email over and over, the way I used to do
when I was waiting to hear from Mark after one of our fights, waiting for
absolution, for reprieve. I thought about emailing Mark, to whom I hadn’t
spoken since our last fight – we’d broken up via email, exchanged personal
items through our mutual friend Jill. But this was a life-or-death emergency,
this was an excuse to contact anyone you’d ever loved and tell them whatever
you’d have them know before you both died.
I’m all right, I wanted to tell him,
I’m still alive.
Sorry for the silence around here; it was a weird week and
a half. I got sick, again, which makes four illnesses in four months – you’d
think I had Munchausen’s, or something, what with all the sick-getting I’ve
been doing lately, but I think it’s just the weather, the stress, the running
around. The writing. It’s like, why don’t I investigate yet another horribly
painful time in my life, and put it out there for everyone to stare at? No wonder I keep getting sick; I keep
exposing my guts.
But I had two really good shows in a row – the gay
marriage benefit at Bluestockings was awesome, and I got to meet the guys who
wrote the children’s book about the two male penguins at the Central Park Zoo
who adopted and hatched an egg together, a book that is now the most banned
children’s book in the U.S. – congrats, guys! The Mixer series at Cakeshop was
also terrific, with Rob Sheffield reading from his heartbreaking memoir Love is
a Mix Tape; I also got a chance to read an advance copy of host Melissa Febos’
upcoming memoir, Whip Smart, which is just dazzling. For my part, I read a
longer excerpt from “Terror Sex,” just written that morning, and the audience
seemed to appreciate it – they kept laughing, which threw me a little, as I
didn’t think the piece was especially funny, but I understand that audiences
often show their support by laughing, and I guess, when you think about it,
going to break into your ex’s apartment is pretty ridiculous. (As I said in the
comments section below, I didn’t actually break into his place; I got off the
train at 28th Street and bought a needlepoint instead. Not that
“Mark” reads this blog, but if he did, I’d want him to breathe easy.)
And then it was all sickness and unhappiness for a few
days; trying to get work done and appointments met, though I was aching and
sniveling and miserable. We had some guests over on Saturday, which was an
exhausting success; then, Sunday night around 5am, there was a stunning crash,
and I was awakened from a not-so-deep sleep to find that one of the windows,
improperly closed after the gathering, had been blown open and inward, and had
shattered on the floor. Broken glass everywhere, freezing wind and snow blowing
into the apartment, cats way more curious than they should have been – you’d
think they’d avoid the cold and the danger; I know I would have, had I had a
choice. Bill was roused, and we did our best to get rid of the glass without
hurting ourselves; I jumped on the phone and started trying to find someone who
could help board up or repair the window at 5 in the morning during a blizzard.
By 6:30am, a guy came over and took the window and the rest of the broken glass
away; by 7:30am, our super was there with some sheetrock to block the hole in the
wall while we waited for the replacement window, which was installed at 6pm
last night. At times like this, I am very grateful that we live in New York
City, where stuff like this is routinely taken care of by experts available
around the clock. (Experts who charge hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars.)
And you know, sometimes the metaphors just write
themselves: A window blew inwards and smashed. I’d opened a portal to the
outside world, and didn’t properly seal it, and it broke inside, leaving a hole
and a mess and a blast of frost. The repair guy, a security specialist from
Israel, was trying to tell me that it could have been an attempted break-in;
that maybe one of our guests had left the window unlatched on purpose so they
could come back later and rob us. “You shouldn’t be so, err, open,” he warned
me.
And he’s probably right. Not about somebody breaking in –
I highly doubt that my Aunt Rita left the window unlatched so she could come
back later and steal the Nintendo Wii – but about being so open. I cringe when
I read the post below this one; I cringed when I read it aloud, to laughs. But
I’m not deleting it. Why bother? It’s true. Whether I write about it or not, it
still happened. The feelings are there, whether they’re exposed or not.
It’s the eternal struggle of the memoirist: Why write about
yourself, especially when it’s painful? Why not, you know, grow an imagination,
make something up, maybe write about somebody else for a change? But once
you’ve started writing about yourself, how can you stop? It’s what you do, it’s
who you are, it’s how you put bread on the table (or, in my case, soy milk in
the fridge).
I’m not answering this question anytime soon. Nor am I
going to stop asking it.
But I am appearing live and in person a few times over the
next two weeks! So if you want to break in and steal the Wii – well, you can’t,
because the windows are all locked now, and will remain so FOREVER so as to
avoid a repeat of last night’s mayhem. But these would be optimal Wii-stealing
opportunities – or optimal opportunities to come by and say hi:
Sunday, March 8: Girls Write Now day! (Also International
Women’s Day, and my friend Stephanie’s birthday.) I’ll be in the audience for
another mentor-mentee reading from one of my favorite organizations, Girls
Write Now, taking place this Sunday at 4pm at the New School’s Lang Student
Center, 55 West 13th St., 2nd floor.
Friday, March 13: Talkingstick storytelling series at the
Rubin Museum, 17th Street and 7th Ave. in Manhattan.
Starts at 8:30 in the lobby, and features guests Jen DeMeritt and The Fools.
More
soon – or less, if I wise up. But, knowing me, probably more.
Sitting here in a cybercafe in Washington DC, feeling lonely and out of place. Got a reading to do tonight; tomorrow morning I get to go home. I don’t know when I got to be such a baby about traveling — it used to be exciting to go places, stay in hotels, do readings. Now I’m just glum. Had lunch with a friend, wandered around Borders, didn’t bother to reshelve my books someplace more prominent — reshelving just makes more work for the clerks, and I’m in an everything-is-pointless mood anyway. Pining for the new apartment, for the cats, for Bill; even for the office, or the gym, or the grocery store, where the cashiers in their fingerless gloves speak rapid Spanish to each other across the aisles. Just someplace close to home. Bought some Dickens (Great Expectations, as if I have any of those) and a copy of Vogue; resisting a candy bar, though I want one desperately right now — I know that one will lead to two or three, will lead to horrible self-loathing, will lead to a severe sugar crash right before the reading. Feel like I’m looking at the world through a window; feel like a ghost. Guess I’ll walk around in the cold some more, or maybe go back to the room and read. This time tomorrow, I’ll be back home. I’ll post pictures of the reading and write about how fun it was and all the people I saw, and if the organizers ask me to come back and do it again sometime, I’ll say sure, thanks for asking, I’d love to. Just give me enough time to forget today.
Sitting here in our new apartment, listening to the cats’ water fountain trickling peacefully by the kitchen. One cat is on the easy chair nearby, another on the ottoman in the bedroom, the third under the bed — she’s still acclimating, as we all are, I suppose. But it already feels like home to me. We moved in over the course of last week — the movers brought all our stuff from storage on Monday, we started unpacking and arranging stuff on Tuesday and Wednesday, the deliveries and repair guys all came on Thursday, more unpacking on Friday, and then Saturday we made the big leap: packed the suitcases full of clothes, the box of kitchen supplies, and the cats in their carriers, and headed down here for our first night in the new place. I was ecstatic, post-move, even as the cats were hating our guts for displacing them for the third time in a year; then I woke up yesterday with the worst virus I’ve had in years — puking, aching, shivering, the whole nine.
So I’m home today, rather than at the office, where I desperately need to go one of these days; the virus has abated somewhat, but I know I have to take it easy, have to let myself rest and recover from the stress my body’s been under for, oh, about a year now. And, weirdly, I’m grateful. I’m grateful that I got sick the day after the move, and not the day of. I’m grateful that I’m here in this beautiful new place, full of sunlight and steam heat that says shhhhhh, with a deep, inviting tub for soaking my aching bones. I’m grateful to rest today, instead of running around doing errands and keeping appointments and working; grateful that I have an excuse the rest of the world understands: I’m sick. And I’m grateful that my body decided to give it up all at once, the toxins that I’ve stored up from a year of anger and frustration and displacement, rather than store them, because I don’t need them anymore. It’s over. We’re home again — finally, home.
1. My personal essay, “Girl Meets Toy,” was voted by readers as one of Nerve.com’s ten best of the year! They only publish eleven per year, but still! I’m flattered. (I’m kidding. They publish at least, like, sixteen.)
2. I’ve joined the board at Girls Write Now! I can’t tell you how delighted I am to be an official part of the team at this amazing organization; I’d brag about the company I’m in, but it’d be unseemly.
As an official biffle of GWN, I’ll be attending this Sunday’s Annual Winter Reading, featuring original works read by girls and their mentors, as well as 2008 National Book Award winner Judy Blundell (What I Saw and How I Lied). It’s at the New York Ethical Culture Society, 2 West 64th St. at Central Park West, 5pm, suggested donation $10-20.
Here’s a clip from a previous Girls Write Now reading, as featured on NY1. New Yorkers of the Week!
3. I’ve got a bunch of upcoming classes, readings, and appearances! And yes, I’m actually excited about them. There’s a free memoir seminar on Wednesday, January 21, an appearance at the Washington DC JCC on Tuesday, February 3, and a benefit to help overturn California’s Prop 8 and promote marriage equality on Sunday, February 15 at Bluestockings Books (click here for more info on all these events). Come to the benefit on the 15th and donate more than $5, and I will write you a personalized haiku! No fucking kidding/I will seriously write/a haiku for you. And it will be better than that one, I swear.
4. And FINALLY. After eighteen months of negotiations, eleven months in temporary housing, two failed deals, and one ongoing lawsuit, we FINALLY got an apartment, and will be moving into our own home on Inauguration Day. Our long national nightmare is finally over!
Except…now I have no excuse not to write another book.