"If writers had to wait until their precious psyches were completely serene there wouldn’t be much writing done."

I just took a risk that I wouldn’t have taken if I didn’t have confidence in my writing. I’m not the kind of person who asks for much, but, if you have some knuckle-mobility to spare, keep your fingers crossed for me, please.

Will You Remember

A bizarre feeling for which one never prepares herself, because she doesn’t exactly anticipate it coming: elimination of all traces of a character trait you’d built in from before the silly conglomeration of words you haphazardly threw on a page one night even became the skeleton of a novel. It’s more of a misfit detail than a character trait, I suppose, but it isn’t particularly important, and it’s becoming difficult to write-around. So it goes, and so it must go. Strange, though, to strip something from your main character—the first person to ever make it to the page—that, despite the billion ways he’s changed, he’s had from the very start.

There’s no use in looking back, I think. (In more ways than one.)

MT

"At a certain point, while you’re failing miserably, you do find a kind of engine in the book that allows you to move forward with it. It’s a feeling I get when I understand that the thing has begun to lift off."

Infinite Jest, pages 692-698, Back Bay Books 10th anniversary paperback edition.
OR
The most flawless pages of fiction I’ve ever read.

Convincing Ourselves In Sleep

One a.m., wide awake. I’m slipping back into an old pattern of not sleeping again, my body not physically able to feel tired at night, though in the mornings I can barely get through a paragraph in my book without my lids going heavy. When the sleep does come, it’s staccato and sweat-drenched.

I spend the hours horizontal but awake writing stories in my head, future plot lines for my life and the people in it. Sometimes the people not yet in it, too. Occasionally, they’ll pass me into sleep, but often my mind’s buzzing just prolongs my consciousness; I get scared to let the stories go because I should ride out being able to create, even if only conceptually, as long as I can. Because maybe I fear I’ll wake up one morning to the sound of my alarm—church bells—and that ability will be gone. Because maybe I fear that if I stop thinking through the stories, they’re less likely to come true.

The greatest irony, though: Busying myself with this adult-version of playing pretend is what often finally gets me to sleep, yet the reason I’m kept awake in the first place is my mind racing, chastising and worrying about not having been able to write lately.

All my life, I’ve spent time trying to find which bridges I need to build to get me where I want to go. Now that I’ve found so many of them, I’m shaken by the idea that, when the time comes to construct, my toolbox is all wrong.

MT

"‘Some boy I hardly knew in the room below mine heard me staggering around whimpering at the top of my lungs. He came up and sat up with me until it went away. It took most of the night. We didn’t converse; he didn’t try to comfort me. He spoke very little, just sat up with me. We didn’t become friends. By graduation I’d forgotten his name and major. But on that night he seemed to be the piece of string by which I hung suspended over hell itself.’"

"Writers are often ashamed at who they are and what they do. Other people are out there fighting wars and fixing cars and destroying our country with poisonous loans—and here we are, sitting around in our footy-pajamas, writing about vampires and unicorns, about broken hearts and shattered jaws. A lot of the time we won’t get much respect, but you know what? Fuck that. Take the respect. Writers and storytellers help make this world go around. We’re just as much a part of the societal ecosystem as anybody else. Craft counts. Art matters. Stories are important. Freeze-frame high-five. Now have a beer and a shot of whisky and shove all your shame in a bag and burn it."

The Light That’s Growing From the Ground

Wow. A hell of a lot can change in a year. But I’ve come to learn that if you’re doing things right, the change doesn’t stop when you switch out your calendar. Keep healing. Keep growing.

…just know I found a better place to rest my head.

MT

Three For the Road

Still with roughly six-hundred pages left in Infinite Jest, I’m now fully-aware that I won’t be finishing any more books this year. So, before I get lost in the time-sucking insanity that is the next couple of weeks, I wanted to remark on the books that’ve made the most impact on me this year, and which chord they struck. I’m not one for year-end countdowns—I’m admittedly late to the game on a lot of stuff, and have a hard time picking “best”—but this year, being in the throes of Revisionsanity, I found what little unoccupied space is left in my head commandeered by these three books (in no particular order).

• The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore by Benjamin Hale: I picked this up out of the ARC paperback box on a whim, its mix of linguistic-nerd candy, literary fiction and a Brooklyn-based author luring me in. I took it off my desk one night to read on the train home, and barely put it down to eat and sleep until I was done twelve days and 578 pages later. Hale’s novel had a soul and bravery that grabbed me, and I loved indulging in its narrator’s bias. I finished feeling like, for the most part, though filtered through Bruno’s perspective, I’d been presented with a novel that was full, dimensional, and cared for by the writer from every angle. It’s an experience I rarely have, and my expectations of my own writing have been heightened as a result; I’m more cognizant of the 360-degree view of novel construction.


• Anthropology of an American Girl by Hilary Thayer Hamann: Once I’d finished this novel, quit sobbing and started to breathe again like a normal human, I still couldn’t find words for Hamann’s 2010 novel (also plucked from the ARC bin). In 608 pages, Hamann accomplished something on which I’d thrown in the towel: translating what love actually feels like. But not love as as its portrayed conventionally—the kind of love that few are even capable of feeling, and that one must be damaged to feel. The kind of love I’ve experienced, the kind of love that’s scared me and consumed me and fueled me so intensely that it’s evaded words. Hamann found them.


•  You Deserve Nothing by Alexander Maksik: That this novel is wrapped in controversy regarding truth and exploitation is irrelevant; regardless of its source material, Nothing’s feats in structure, pacing and voice stand on their own. I picked this up at Europa’s table at the Brooklyn Book Festival, and read it at the right time—one during which I was worried if my own writing was substantial or “about anything” when paired down. Maksik’s narrative, a relationship story (among souls and streets) at its core, reminded me to, well, believe that I was enough because I decided I was. And turns out I am.

That’s my (narcissistic) story. Now I’m dying to know which titles have left their mark on you this year.

MT

"I guess my life hasn’t always been happy, or easy, or exactly what I want. At a certain point, I just have to try not to think too much about certain things, or else they’ll break my heart."

petervidani:

I Work For The Internet Dot Org

Sisters and brothers of the internet, add yourself to the site!

Everyone, please go to Fight For The Future Dot Org, read about what is going to happen, and make the call to your representative.

I rarely stray from talking about books, writing and New York esoterica, but this is important. (And not just because my photo ended up in the screen cap.) I’m an online editor for a major publication, a writer who publishes her work online and, like most of you, have had my life substantially altered in the best way possible by freedom to use the internet as I choose.

Don’t let that change for you nor me.

Reblogged from Peter Vidani.

"After completing a book you won’t be the person you were before trying to write it, not if you’ve done it right."

This morning, I got in line at my daily coffee stop, roughly fifteen people ahead of me in the queue. About standard. My attention was in my book as I heard the woman behind me sigh, “This is going to take forever,” gesturing to move out of line and leave. She was a tourist—I knew it much before catching a glimpse of her California license as she paid.

“It won’t,” I said, and went back to reading. She got back in line.

Three minutes later, we were both out the door with our drinks.

How I could ever, even for a split second, entertain the idea of leaving this place—sometimes, I just have to laugh at myself. And then go back to reading.

Today is shaping up to be an all-around You Have to Be Kidding Me kind of day, but when you start the morning standing next to someone on the F train who is not only also reading Infinite Jest, but is on the exact same page—the exact same footnote—as you…well, how do you expect the rest of the day to go?

I mean. Really.