Special Wednesday Wisdom

"Ideas are like coffee. If you let them percolate, then drip down, you'll get a nice hot cup of caffeinated material. Drink up." - me

(I know it's hard to believe that I came up with this gem, but I did! Yeah, my thesis is gonna rock hard with this type of wisdom. Go me!)

Freudian Slip

Before I went to my peer advisory writing group this evening, I attended a going away party for a friend at work. There were many inappropriate discussions about snatch, viewing porn on a BlackBerry, and women ogling other women. (Oh, how I adore my colleagues!)

The latest draft of my thesis, which is about how I inherited my Jewish identity and outlook on life through what was both spoken and unsaid by my grandparents' and father's Holocaust legacies, includes this line about a nighttime asthma attack I had when I was seven:

"I could almost taste the blackness as though an octopus has replaced the night air with its inky discharge."

We discussed the strangeness of the metaphor/image and why it worked even though it shouldn't. Then my friend asked what the plural of octopus is.

"It's octopussies," I said. Then I turned bright red and we laughed until it hurt.

Time Vampire

Urban Dictionary's Word of the Day is Time Vampire. This is something that sucks away your time like a vampire does blood. I love, love, love this concept.

My thesis is a time vampire. Or at least it will be once I start working on it for real. My goal is to write 3-4 pages a day for the next two months, not including weekends for the most part.

Probably it is bad that I describe the writing of what I hope will be my next book as a time vampire, huh?

Happy Anniversary, BlogHer!

Four years ago, someone took a chance on me. I'd only been blogging for a few months when I heard that BlogHer was looking for volunteer contributing editors for a new site they were launching. I rushed to their current homepage, noticed that people already claimed the topic I most wanted (feminism and gender), and saw that travel and recreation was still open. Well, I love traveling and do it a lot. I had just blogged a trip to France. I left a message with links to three posts (this was before I had any idea what HTML was, not that I'm an expert at it now), and hoped for the best.

Not long after, I heard from Lisa Stone, one of BlogHer's founders. She said that she "loved" my blog and offered me the gig. I was thrilled! (Re-reading her email today, which I just looked at again, brings tears to my eyes. Yeah, I still have an email from January 2006 in my inbox.) My first post - Introduction to Travel and Recreation appeared on January 22, 2006. I hoped for many things, but was not sure what to expect.

Four years later, I still write for BlogHer, although on feminism, not travel. It offered me a platform when I was just exploring writing. It offered me a platform when I sent out proposals for a travelogue I was writing about unusual things to see and do New York City. It offered me a platform when my book, Off the Beaten (Subway) Track, was published 2.5 years later. It offered me a platform to meet and be inspired by other women.

Sure, it hasn't been all champagne and roses. When I realized that my four year anniversary was coming up, I compared it to my marriage: sometimes I wanted to scream and stomp around with selfish, delusional indignity, but overall my life is richer, happier, and better in every way because I have it. (Husband was slightly offended by this analogy, but I stand by it.) I'm so lucky.

A Deadly Sin

In the last two days, I read four things* that lead me to a deadly sin. Oh, envy! How it rears its big ugly head up and makes me covet the talents of others. As I said to two of the writers, "It's like penis envy, only real.**" Yes, I want their tools. Maybe this is also a violation of a commandment, too - do not covet thy neighbor's literary skills.

*Two stories at school; The Scenic Route by Binnie Kirschenbaum; and a blog post by AV Flox about jizz as an anti-depressant whose conclusion I disagree with, but loved the writing anyway. Unlike the prior sentence, which is a good example of very bad writing.
**Sorry Freud, but I'm not buying your sexist crap. He'd probably like the study about how precious pearls of cum prevent women from being depressed that Flox wrote so well about...

Publishers Weekly Best Ten Books of 2009 - 100% Male

The problem with feminism is that it makes women crazy. We seem to believe that our words and our stories matter, and that we are not only capable of telling stories, but that we can excel at it. Our voices and our story telling techniques may differ from what has traditionally been viewed as great literature, but we think that doesn't mean that they are not equally good.

Of course, these beliefs are silly, and Publishers Weekly took great pains to remind people that women's work is just not up to par with that of (white) men. Their list of the ten best books of 2009 includes ten dudes, nine of whom are white. Some people bristled at this. Kamy Wicoff at She Write - an online community of women writers that is free and you should join - wrote:

Try to imagine if they had come out with a list of the Best Books of 2009 and it had included ZERO MEN. Try to imagine if Amazon had released its Best Books of 2009 and it had included only TWO men. I know it's hard. But just try.

Wicoff asked the She Writes community to take action. To protest this ridiculous list, we should all buy a book published by a woman in 2009, take a photo of ourselves with it, and explain why we bought it.



Here I am with the 2009 paperback edition of American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. When the hardcover came out in 2008, it received glowing reviews. My friend Alex Elliot read it for her bookclub, and said that I would really like it. Sittenfeld and I are the same age, and I wish that I had an ounce of her talent.

I don't have pictures of myself with another two books that came out in 2009, but last night I attended a reading of A Friend of the Family by Lauren Grodstein. I thought it was great. Deborah Copaken Cogan also read From Here to April, which came out in hardcover in 2008 and paperback this month. It was also excellent. Both works were funny and thought-provoking, as were their creators.

If you are also pissed about the Publishers Weekly list, join the She Writes community's protest. Once you post a picture of yourself on your blog holding a book you bought by a female writer that came out in 2009 (the deadline is Friday), send Kamy the link at kamy@shewrites.com. She Writes will send these links to the entire community (5000+) on Saturday. While the emphasis is on women writers protesting, I think anyone who cares about sexism should feel free to participate.

Richard Peck Made Me Cry Today

The day started out well. I woke up a bit before my alarm sounded, feeling refreshed. After feeding Tycho the rabbit and myself, I ran three miles at the gym. Then I scurried home to purchase U2 concert tickets for Husband. For a concert on Sept. 16, 2010.

Ticket purchasing is not as easy as it sounds. First, he had to subscribe to the band's fan site. This runs something like $50. Then he received an email with a secret code that could be used to purchase up to four tickets before they went on sale to the general public. Since Husband was at a Very Important Meeting when his special group of bribe givers was allowed to give U2 more of their money, he asked me to click on the magic link, enter the code, and secure the best tickets available, at whatever cost.

Fine. How hard can that be? Except that he already used the code he provided me for tickets for a concert this past September. And I had no access to his U2 account to find his new entree to U2 happiness. The man asked me to do a simple task, and it distressed me to no end. He works hard. All he wants are some fucking concert tickets, and I could not provide. Two frustrating hours later, I finally bought the tickets. Yay.

However, I was late for everything else I had to do today. Among other things that did not get done in a timely fashion, I missed a call from an organization offering me a job. Yay for the job offer, boo for missing the call. I left the woman an overly enthusiastic message on her voice mail at 5:30.

Blah, blah, blah. Fortunately, I arrived at school on time to hear my favorite author from when I was in 4th grade. Blossom Culp, the main character in Ghosts I Have Been, was a hero to me back then. I wanted to be her. So all semester, I'd been waiting to hear Richard Peck. During his talk about writing, he said, "I write for lonely people looking for friends in books."

Thank you, Mr. Peck.

Maurice Runs the Wheel Out of My Head

Earlier this year, I handed in a story in my lit class. I thought it was really good, so I was surprised when my instructor gave it back the next week with no comments. When I asked her why she didn't like it, she explained that she always looked forward to my work, so she was disappointed to read a story I had submitted before.

I was confused, as I was certain that I had been thinking about the story for weeks, so I didn't see how I could have handed it in already. But when I looked through my files, I discovered that I had written a story, turned it in, forgot, and then wrote almost word for word the exact same story and handed it in. It was scary.

Nine months later, I decided to write a story about my work with Haven Coalition. I knew I wrote a short piece about it first semester, so I re-read it, and used what worked. I thought I wrote a scene in which I was at my desk at work, the phone rang, and my first hosting night was arranged. But when I looked through my files (eerie music), I found a story I wrote almost exactly a year ago that, almost word for word, had the same opening.

Maurice, the hamster who runs the wheel that powers my brain, is scaring me. On one hand, if I wrote almost the exact same thing a year apart, I think it means that I had an important idea, and I'm glad that I did not forget. The fact that I have no memory of doing this is disturbing.

Puke

After I posted the last chapter of Always, I went to school. My story about my grandfather's life was set to be workshopped. I was nervous, but figured that it was still better than something I wrote 20 years ago, even if it had no similes.

The workshop was extremely helpful, but also brutal. People were very generous with their praise for what worked, and constructive with why the parts that didn't work failed. I may have improved my writing since "Always," but damn, I have a long way to go.

Class left me both drained and with lots to ponder, but I joined a few friends for food and drink anyway. Indulging myself, I ordered chocolate pudding at the French restaurant we went to. It came with this luscious almond studded chocolate cookie thing (it was sort of like a chocolate waffle cone) and sugary whipped cream. I felt nauseated after I ate the cookie and a few bites of pudding, but ignored it.

When I finally got home, I still felt sick. My undiagnosed mysterious digestive ailment does this to me every once in a while, so I went to bed, figuring I'd feel better in the morning. Dear Reader, false hope. Oh, false hope.

Since I woke up, I have done nothing but puke and crap. It was so bad at one point that I even shit myself, ruining a pair of underwear that I really like. At other times, I lay on the bathroom floor, writhing with cramps. I worried about dehydration, but my second round of vomiting was the Gatorade I sipped to prevent that. I also have a low fever.

Sam Tanenhaus is scheduled to speak at school tonight about his book, The Death of Conservatism. I'm not sure I buy his theory about the two different types of conservatives - good ones who see that government can be positive and bad ones who, in the words of Grover Nordquist, want to shrink it to the size where it can be drowned in the bathtub - but I've been looking forward to the event all semester. It is pretty rare that my political interests and my literary interests collide. Now I can't go. Puke. (Well, I could go and puke on the conservatives, but that is pretty rude, and I don't want to stoop to their behavior. Plus there aren't likely to be many conservatives in a New School audience.)

Truth or Dare

Two new chapters are up at Always. I must have been drunk with words as I typed them up, as I could not stop hiccuping. The force of the hiccups jerked my head and hands each time, so there are probably more typos than usual or intended. (I'm copying exactly what's in the notebook, so the punctuation is not great.)

Chapter 13 is all about a party that the main characters attend. It features, of course, the game "Truth or Dare." This is the second time that "Truth or Dare" appears in the story, but of course, nothing really interesting happens because I was/am a total nerd. It cracks me up. I was obsessed with this game through even the early years of high school. (And when the Madonna documentary came out, my dorky friends and I were rendered giddy by the title. Oooooh! "Truth or Dare!" How exciting!)

When I was in eighth grade, I once played a more risque version of Truth or Dare called Two Minutes in the Closet. Since were there three girls and only one boy, this was not such a balanced game. I was excited to kiss someone. That's about as far as I was willing to go. These days, it blows my mind how naive that was, although I am sure that there are plenty of geeks who also feel the way I did, just as I am sure that there were many kids who were doing all sorts of things that I barely even knew existed. OK, so I have no point except that I was a nerd whose heights of ecstasy didn't progress beyond slow dancing close to some guy. Whatever.

Memoir, Fiction, and Balls vs. Testicles in Literature

I read Frank Conroy's memoir Stop-Time for my lit seminar on Wednesday. What's good about it is the writing. Conroy doesn't tell his story in a linear fashion, and at times switches to the present tense. I just tried both of these techniques for a story that I handed in last week which will be workshopped on Monday, so it is nice to have another successful model to learn from. (I patterned my work on A Feather on the Breath of God by Sigrid Nunez.)

During a break from the meandering class discussion, a friend calculated that we pay $125 an hour for our classes. We resumed class. After a ten minute debate on Conroy's use of the word "balls," which our professor defended by saying, "Balls is a great word," I thought about other uses I had for $20.84 I spent for that. Not that I disagree that balls is a great word or really minded talking about whether Conroy should have used "testicles" instead of balls, but still. That's a lot of money for something I talk about for free all the time.

Speaking of balls, I posted four more chapters of Always. Chapter 9 is one of my favorites so far, and Chapter 10 (not to be confused with Chapter 10*, as I had two chapter tens) is one of the most gag-inducing. The similes flow in Chapter 11 most impressively. I actually learned a lot from myself from twenty years ago while typing up this work.

The Point

Author Binnie Kirshenbaum spoke at school on Monday night. She read from her latest book, The Scenic Route, which was hilarious and also troubling. During the Q&A, she relayed an anecdote that got Maurice* in a frenzy. Kirshenbaum said that she was telling her husband a story one day, and as usual, she went into a digression that she thought provided important context for the story.

"Get to the point," her husband interrupted her.

"What do you mean, 'get to the point?'" she asked him. "There is no point. I'm telling you a story to entertain you."

After I stopped laughing, I thought about what that meant for me. One of the things we are always talking about at school is what the point of our work is, the "so what?" that gets people to read something. When people ask me what my point is, 99% of the time I have no answer. I just want to tell a story. Maybe, if the story is told well, that's all the point that one needs.

Speaking of pointless, more chapters of the young adult novel I wrote when I was in 8th grade are ready to entertain (and I use that word loosely in this situation) at Always.

*Maurice is the hamster who runs on the wheel that powers my brain.

Cheese-tastic

My face hurts, probably due to all the cringing I did while typing up Chapters 2 - 4 of Always, the atrocious young adult book that I wrote when I was in eighth grade. Why I decided to use a male narrator is beyond me. Also puzzling: why give half the characters fake names, but then use the real names (or ridiculously close to real names - Suzannah, anyone?) for others. I wonder what Maurice* was thinking all those years ago.

What most embarrasses me and interests me about Always is the combination of how I saw myself at that time, and how I wanted to be perceived. My favorite line so far, hands down, is "I got the feeling that when Suzannah Rawlings spoke, people usually listened." Oh man, how I wished that were true!

*The hamster who runs on the wheel that powers my brain.

Always: Chapter 1

For the most boring first chapter of a young adult novel in the history of young adult novels, read Chapter 1 of my first novel, "Always." I can only excuse myself by noting that I was probably only 13 or 14 when I wrote this. Also, it sort of gets better.

Note that the description of the house in the novel is suspiciously similar to that of my parents' house... Oh, the cringe-inducing hilarity!

New Mottoes

During class on Tuesday night, I reflected on my inability to write things that are descriptive. I decided that it is because I do not think in images, but in concepts. Por ejemplo, when I think about the tree that grew in front of my parents' house, here is my thought process:

It was taller than our humble abode and a conifer. The pine needles fell all over the driveway and any car that was parked near or under its branches. One day, Dana and I came from home school and found our neighbor chopping branches off our tree. We freaked the fuck out, but my parents were glad that he took matters into his own hands because it had become overgrown and blocked part of the driveway. My sister and I, however, felt that the tree was rendered bald and ugly by the indignity visited upon it. Years after that, my mom noticed that the branches at the crown of the tree looked lame. She asked my dad to call a tree doctor. By the time one of them finally put the call in seven years later, the tree was ridden with some sort of tree disease and past saving. It was chopped down. Now no one can find my house, as my friends used to look for the ginormous evergreen tree as a landmark.

While this is a very nice story, it is not terribly descriptive. Anyway, once I realized that I do not think in images, and images are central to writing that is "literary," I realized that "I am about as literary as a potato sprouting eyes." (Actually, I love that image. Potatoes with "eyes" gross me out and fascinate me.) Without writing images, it is hard to include metaphors in my stories. Seriously, I would not think to include a metaphor if one walked up to me at a cocktail party, introduced itself politely, and then punched me in the face when I did not recognize it. If I was to write a metaphor about the tree, it would be something cheesy like, "The tree was an angel that guarded our house against the darkness of the night that wasn't really all that dark because we faced a busy highway that was brightly illuminated by street lights." No good.

Despite my lack of "literary" credentials, I think I can write well in a few styles. Hence my other new motto is, "This cubic zirconium has many facets." Bwa ha ha ha. Fuck being literary.

So, What Do You Do?

"So, what do you do?"

It's a common question. I just no longer have a good answer for it. A few years ago, it was easy. I puffed up my chest and told people that I work at a nonprofit agency on public policy and programs.

Now I could also answer that I'm a writer, although I don't feel like a writer. Writers are people who write every day, whether or not they earn a living from it. Sometimes there are days when I don't write a word other than what is on my to do list. I was thinking about how much like a poser I feel when I tell people that I'm a writer, and then I realized that I was narrating what scene in my head. Maybe constantly thinking like a writer to qualifies me as a writer, even if I don't write daily?

The funny thing is that I still think of myself as a policy person even though I don't do anything policy related on a daily basis, either. But just as I narrate things in my head on an ongoing basis, I think about policy every day. I certainly don't feel like a pretentious douche (scent: Summer Rain) when I tell people that I'm currently unemployed and looking for a job in public policy or program management the way I do when I say, "I'm a writer."

The difference, I'm thinking now, is that being good at your job as a writer is a lot more subjective than as a policy person/program manager. In the latter, it is obvious if you understand what is going on in the world and whether you are good at it or not. Obviously, there's a baseline for writing, but it is a lot more subjective as to whether one is good at it.

Just thinking while suffering from insomnia for no discernible reason...

"The Lost"

On my way back from visiting my sister in Iowa, I read two books: On Writing by Stephen King (excellent - both entertaining and helpful) and The Lost by Daniel Mendelsohn. The Lost is about Mendelsohn's family history and his obsession with learning what happened to his grandfather's brother and his family during the Holocaust. Unfortunately, it is also about historical, current, and personal interpretations of the Five Books of Moses, and semi-related sibling rivalry stories. Also, the style includes a lot of repetition in storytelling after a tangent (just like listening to someone tell a story with lots of tangents) and dramatic foreshadowing (i.e. - "But I couldn't have know what would happen next.") I felt like Mendelsohn should have read On Writing.

That said, the core of the story is well written and very compelling to me. Plus, I learned important lessons for my own writing. I love me some tangents, but too many of them are distracting. I also always try to cram semi-related stories into my narratives, but now I see why that doesn't work. If The Lost had been about 100-150 pages shorter, it would have been brilliant. (On the other hand, it won a National Book Critic Circle award, so don't take my word for it.)

Reading stories about the Holocaust always makes me restless. Like Mendelsohn, I want to know what happened to my grandfather's family. When I discovered in 2005 that one of his brothers-in-law actually survived and moved to Israel after the war, it was a breakthrough. But that gentleman died in the early 1980s, and none of his relatives knew anything about my family, although they are lovely people and I am glad that I met them. I've always believed that not knowing what happened to someone is one of the hardest things that people deal with. The human mind craves closure.

Writing about Pubic Hair Removal Restores My Good Spirits

I woke up this morning grumpy and unsettled. With all the serious shit that is going on in the world, like the assassination of Dr. George Tiller and the amount of money that banks are spending to lobby against sensible regulation, I feared that I could not do a good job on my BlogHer topic of the day, pubic hair shaving. Oddly enough, once I got going with my old friend, I felt a lot better. If you can't mock the crap out of pubic hair removal, what can you mock?

Plus, this latest BlogHer post is the third that I wrote in the past three weeks that returned me to my humor roots. In the last year, I've become so serious. I started blogging and writing almost four years ago (!) to find a funny outlet for my anger. It's nice to go back to that.

More bad jokes, less frustration!

Three Cheers for Maurice

Frankly, I'm in deep shit. I think that working full-time, attending a full-time master's program in creative writing, drafting two posts a week for BlogHer, serving on the Board of a nonprofit child care center that has real estate issues, attempting healthy-ish lifestyle through exercise, and continuing to have relationships with friends and family (which I am failing at miserably in some cases) is maybe more than I can handle. For the last two weeks, I've been exhausted constantly.

It's not just me who needs a break. Maurice, the hamster who runs on the wheel that powers my brain, is on strike. At first I was mad at his furry ass for not keeping up, thus resulting in me making big mistakes like handing in the same story twice (written in two different ways, since I didn't remember writing it in the first place) or smaller errors like when I called Oedipus Odysseus in yesterday's blog post. Now I realize that the little dude is just overworked.

Maurice and I used to take breaks to read friends' blogs or watch mindless TV. These days, I need to think for more hours, whether to learn about the nuances of Obama's foreclosure prevention plan or to answer questions about a book I read for class, and poor little Maurice runs nonstop from when I wake up until I go to sleep. That's a lot for any brain hamster, let alone a 33 year old one. So I want to thank him publicly for hanging in there. (Thanks Maurice!)

I need to take a hard look at everything that's on my plate. I know what I want to cut, but Husband is not on board with that plan. If only I could write a book and sell it for six-figures, like, say fucking Meghan McCain,* that would solve everything. Uh, right....

*Love Jossip's suggested title about Ann Coulter, as does Maurice.

Maybe the Childhood Concussions Did Have an Effect...

A surge of excitement ran through me as my lit professor handed back our papers from the previous class. I had worked extra hard on mine, and thought that it was one of the best things I had written in a while. In addition to telling the story of my best friend from 4th grade and exploring racism in my hometown, it had metaphors!

The professor generally keeps the papers she likes best at the top of the pile, so I was a bit disconcerted when mine came in the middle of the stack. Looking it over, I was struck by the lack of comments on it. "Oh my God," I fretted. "She hated it!" In the following nanoseconds, I realized that I was a talentless hack who should drop out of school and never show my face again. Then I decided that it might be more productive to ask her why she didn't like it.

"Oh, I always look forward to reading your work," she replied. "But I read this one already, so I was disappointed that it wasn't anything new."

"What? You did?" I urged the hamster to run more quickly on the wheel that powers my brain so that I could figure out how this was possible. Maurice grunted at me before reluctantly picking up the pace.

"Yes, this is a nice expansion of something you handed in earlier in the semester."

I frowned. I knew that I had been thinking about this particular story for a few weeks, but I was pretty sure that it hadn't left my head until I wrote the paper I now clutched in my bony hand. Finally, Maurice got his furry ass in gear and I realized that I had, in fact, handed in the same basic story my second week of class. Worse, I had just looked at that first story again on Monday night, and thought about where I wanted to go with it, making no connection to the fleshed out version that I eagerly anticipated receiving back on Wednesday night.

Very, very scary. I would think that I completely have lost it, except that I think that Maurice threw some information out of the mental filing cabinet to make room for all the details I learned about the Obama administration's mortgage refinancing and loan modification program. (I am a very good resource on this!) Still, not good.

Something Not Funny Happened Part Way Through the Writing Program

My goal was to attend an MFA program to better understand the craft behind writing a book, then to write a hilarious account of the horrors and indignities that I suffered through during puberty. My writing sample (or portfolio or whatever the fuck they call it) was an uproarious account of my first bra shopping experience and adjusting to having boobs. This culminated in the absurd experience of a breast reduction at the age of 22. I had a whole draft chapter on my first period and then what happened when I stopped getting it at all at age 17. Funny shit.

The problem is that as I've been studying literature, I find myself writing not so funny stories about the Holocaust and my family, the prejudiced community in which I was raised, and how direct and indirect discrimination impacted my decision to pursue a career in social justice. Sure, sometimes I am able to throw in a good joke about my bubbe's tuchus (that's butt in Yiddish), as my grandfather used a wicked sense of humor to deflect the pain of losing his family in the Holocaust (a tactic I also employ when I talk about subjects that are difficult for me, even if I can't compare what he experienced to anything I did), but I'm finding myself scribbling all sorts of serious little stories. It's both cathartic and distressing to explore these topics.

I hope that as I progress and develop my voice, I can strike a balance between the serious and the hilarious. Writing. Harumph....

Congratulations, You're a Book Winner Now!

Last year, Alex Elliot and I thought that the world needed an anthology of first period stories. We asked the blogosphere for submissions at Congratulations, You're a Woman Now!, and 38 women and one man heeded our call. The stories are all fantastic - Alex and I laughed, we cried, and, we checked the backs of our pants for leaks, and we doubled over in sympathetic cramps. We thought we'd be able to select a group of authors in December and reach out to publishers with the project in January. We were stupid.

In the meantime, Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, a highly achieving 18 year old feminist, just presented her anthology of period stories,My Little Red Book to the world. It is a wonderful collection of short essays in which women of all ages from around the world reflect on their periods. Profits go to awesome charities supporting women globally. I was psyched that some publisher took on the book and that it would be doing good work in addition to getting women to share, but also sighed a lot. Sigh.

I had the chance to interview Rachel for BlogHer. She's just an awesome woman, and her book team rocks the house, too. In fact, they are offering copies of books to women who blog about their first period! Anyone who is interested in a copy can enter the contest by posting her essay, then linking to it in the comments of at my BlogHer post. I am beyond mortified that no one has yet done so, and I know that CUSS readers are brilliant, intrepid, and funny writers with great stories to share who also love free books. (Hint, hint....)

Stories should be posted by Friday, March 13 (somehow, Friday the 13th seemed like an appropriate deadline for stories about first periods). Spread the word...

Two Memes

I was tagged by Verite Parlant at Whose Shoes Are These Anyway? for the writers meme and Liz Everyday Goddess for the seven things meme. I figured that I'd kill two birds with one stone, especially since Liz tagged me back on Jan. 27...

25 Writers Who've Influenced Me*

1. Susan Faludi - Backlash changed the way I looked at the world
2. Jonathan Kozol - Savage Inequalities and Death at a Young Age mobilized me
3. James Baldwin - two articles I read in class last year on race were so brutal that I couldn't breathe
4. Stephen King - the man gets human interaction
5. Anne Lamott - I wrote all about Bird by Bird a few weeks ago
6. Zia Jaffrey - I haven't actually read her books, but she is an incredible teacher and has been my north star for writing
7. Grace Paley - the woman gets human interaction
8. Alice Walker
9. AM Homes
10. Lionel Shriver - The Post-Birthday World shook my foundations and helped me reaffirm decisions that I made about relationships
11. Judy Blume - got me through adolescence
12. Barack Obama
13. Carl Hiaason
14. David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace - fostered my love of random facts with The People's Almanac and The Book of Lists series
15. Howard Zinn
16. Alan Paton
17. EB White - Charlotte's death was my first true heartbreak
18. World Book Encyclopedias - before the internet, it fed my need to know things, fast, and with cool illustrations
19. George Packer
20. Gail Collins
21. Sarah Vowell
22. Zilpha Keatley Snider
23. Edwidge Danticat
24. Jackson Taylor - his first book is coming out soon, but he's another instructor who encouraged me and gave me a chance
25. Ayn Rand - she reminds me how not to be

*Note that many of these are recent influences as I've been looking at writing in a new way this year, but that Faludi and Kozol influenced the decisions I made about what I wanted to do with my life in terms of equality for all.

Seven Things You Didn't Know About Me*

1. I once dyed my body (and the bathroom counter) pink while attempting to dye my hair pink.
2. I want to learn Yiddish.
3. My motto seems to be, "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence," even though I don't want that to be my motto.
4. I can't wait to be an aunt in June!
5. Rahm Emanuel, Donald Rumsfeld, Ann Margaret, Liz Phair, and Charlton Heston graduated from the same high school as I did.
6. I dropped out of law school on the third day.
7. Although as a kid I never expected to travel outside of the US, I love international travel (in large part because of the eating opportunities).

*Unless you are new to CUSS or my life otherwise, you probably already do know these things.

I'm supposed to tag other people, but I like leaving it loose. If you do take either meme, I do adore link love!

Bird by Bird

One of the fellows at work heard that I was an aspiring writer, and he recommended (and more importantly, lent me) Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. In the last few years, I've read a few books on writing (hated Reading Like a Writer by the ironically named Francine Prose) and literature interpretation (loved How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster), but this is by far the best I've ingested thus far. I think it has to do with the tone. Like Foster, Lamott has a light, confessional tone. I feel like a confidant and friend when I read the book, rather than an incompetent, bumbling fool.

"Oh, so everyone writes a shitty first draft," I smiled when I read the chapter called Shitty First Drafts. I mean, I knew that intellectually, but it was nice to see a successful writer commit it to print.

Lamott is funny and generous in sharing her experiences and lessons learned. Although I have a zillion other things I need to be doing, I am savoring every morsel of this book. Lamott offers up the goods. Just thought I'd share.

Is Being a "Dumb Fuck" a Metaphor?

Classes start again on Monday. My goal for the semester is to incorporate metaphors and similes into my writing. I noticed that the writing that we studied in my lit class last semester tended to make liberal use of these literary tools, so I think I should make a strong effort to add more in my stories.

I use metaphors and similes all the time in real life. They just happen to be rather foul. My favorite metaphor was when I described the pieces of toilet paper that resurfaces after flushing the crapper as ghosts haunting their watery graves. I think that is a beautiful image. Also, the idea of romanticizing un-flushed used toilet paper makes me laugh my ass off, like a clown high on nitrous oxide. (OK, that is a scary simile. Clowns are the devils of the circus.) Somehow, though, I suspect that many of the people in my program will find it infantile, so I need to work on developing appropriate metaphors and similes.

Unfortunately, I also love mixed metaphors. That's due to my adoration of hyperbole, another feature of my writing that is less than lauded by literary types. Whatever. If patience is an old lady in a rocking chair waiting for death to relieve her of the excitement of watching paint dry, act like a bull in a china shop. Or something like that.

AAA

Three As are a cause for suspicion these days. The bond rating agencies ignored all common sense, succumbed to pressure, and gave AAA ratings to all manner of junk securities. (As Husband explained to me, when there's a lot of shit in a lot of buckets, the smell of each bucket doesn't offset the others, which how how the rating agencies justified giving excellent ratings to buckets of shit.)

I thought about the AAA rating when I checked my grades online. It turns out that I got an A in my workshop, an A in my lit seminar, and an A in my colloquium. Under normal circumstances, I'd be puffing my chest and celebrating with a metaphorical cigar. However, I know that my grades are as inflated as Moody's ratings on collateralized debt obligations full of subprime mortgages. And just like with all the securities ratings, I know that all of my classmates' "products" were given triple As, too. It's sort of hollow.

Once, way back in the day when I thought that a career in public policy would fulfill me and thus pursued a graduate public administration degree, I aced a semester. I received an A in my advanced seminar on child & family policy (actually a PhD class in the School of Social Work), an A in my seminar on social policy analysis (also a social work PhD course), an A in a course on the legal environment of policymaking, and an A in my public management practicum. Damn, I feel my chest puffing up as I write this. The next semester I almost outdid myself, earning two As (in an insane course on public housing policy and in a policy analysis practicum), and A+ (seriously, they gave me an A+!) in a research practicum on poverty and public policy. Then I got a B+ in a sociology course in which the professor refused to talk to me after I missed a class due to illness, so that ruined it, but whatever. I've never been prouder of my work.

Grades don't buy happiness, that's for sure. I'm pretty nervous to start over again at the end of the month. I won't even go into the problem I'm having trying to change a class because no one is overseeing the fucking program right now; the director is on leave for the semester, and the associate director is out until Jan. 20. Not that they should be at the beck and call of students just because we pay $22,000 a year in tuition, but you'd think someone might stick around for little issues. What do I know about running programs, though? I just got an A in public management and have been administering nonprofit programs for almost a decade. I smell some buckets. (Man, this is way more bitter than I intended it to be.)

For the Lexicon

In class this summer, I learned that Shakespeare invented 3,000 words in English and used them in his plays and poems. How awesome is that? I hope that I can introduce some new vocabulary into the American vernacular through blogging. My first suggestions are:

Pootbood: (noun) This was appeared as the word verification for a comment I wanted to leave on Formula Fed & Flexible Parenting. I think it works very nicely as a new curse word, especially when someone is lying to your face. "You pootbood!" has a nice ring to it, and says to me, "You fucking liar! How dare you!"

Rantom: (noun) My brother-in-law invented this word at breakfast yesterday morning. It is for a rambling rant on that ranges across several random topics. I really love it. I frequently have rantoms.

Along with douche nozzle, I am working to incorporate rantom and pootbood into my vocabulary, so I shall be ready with a smart word for every possible situation. New words take time, though.

Digging Deep

"What does this mean to you? Dig deeper!

Numerous people in my workshop wrote this comment on my story about developing breasts and being tormented by their ginormous size and then undergoing breast reduction surgery (if they bothered to give me back my paper at all, which one person did not, but that is another story). It vexes me because in many cases I don't say what the situation means because it means (or meant) nothing.

For example, I talk about how breasts have not worked out so well for the women on my maternal side. My granny is a short women who walks around stooped over, maybe partially from the two watermelons stuck to her chest. On the other hand, my mom is a woman of average height with a very small frame who had two small boobs until she lost one to cancer when I was 4 years old. The people in my class wanted to know what I thought about her scarred chest when I was growing up, and the honest answer is that I didn't. It was just a fact of life that I accepted. My mom had cancer. They had to cut off one of her boobs. The end.*

The point is that this made me realize two things. First, I am not a deep person. I really do often accept things for their surface explanation. This is not entirely true, as I also analyze certain things that happen until I've beaten the dead horse to a bloody mixed metaphor, but still - I'm shallow. The second thing is that I am lazy. I'm probably not as shallow as I claim (see dead horse metaphor), but digging deep means extra work and maybe even painful revelations, and I'm not going there. Sometimes I just want to tell a funny story. Why look for the underlying pathos just to make the story more literary? It's all very distressing to think about.

*Now you know the truth, so if I ever do write a best-selling book about puberty and there are paragraphs describing how I didn't want to get boobs because I was scared of cancer and blah blah blah, you can all go to the tabloids and say that I am a liar just like James Frey. And then I will have to lie and say that I had recovered memories in the process of writing the book and blah blah blah and it will all be very scandalous. If you do sell me out, I hope that the tabloids pay you good money. Then you can take me out for afternoon tea and we can laugh about it.

October Public Service Announcement: Breast Cancer Awareness Month

Is there anything more despicable than exploiting the fear of breast cancer to sell women products that may actually cause the disease? That's what Breast Cancer Awareness Month is all about these days. Check out my snarky remarks on this travesty of a mockery of a sham at BlogHer. My mom had breast cancer when she was 33, so this stuff hits me right on a pinched nerve.

In other news, my uber-talented brother-in-law created an author website for me. As usual, it is the bomb. In exchange for his help, I'm promoting his gourmet cooking business, Hot Pot Culinary Events. Hot Pot will conduct cooking parties and/or lessons right in the comfort of your own home! Fun times are practically guaranteed.

Class

For once, a post titled "Class" has nothing to do with socioeconomic issues. Have no fear - it also does not mean that I behaved in a way which would exhibit exceptional taste. Rather, I'm excited that I started class at the New School.

My first class was a writing workshop. The instructor* is wonderful, and I think that I will learn a lot from her. There are only 10 students in the workshop, and all of us are first years. The instructor was shocked, as usually workshops are mixed between first and second year students. I've been joking that we are the special ed class. We'll get mainstreamed with the big kids next semester.

Last night I attended my second class, which is about essays and short fiction. (The cheap bastard that resides within me is especially delighted that I don't have to buy any books. All the articles are photocopied and supplied to us for free!) This class is a mix of first and second year and fiction and nonfiction students, although mostly we are first years and nonfiction folk. The instructor of this class is also thoughtful. Again, I believe that I will learn a lot.

One of the assignments was to choose an author from the syllabus and prepare a 10-15 minute oral presentation on a topic on which she/he writes. Using my usual quality barometer, I choose Edwidge Danticat because I read a glowing review of her memoir in my Bible, Entertainment Weekly. (Let's keep this fact between us.) Also, she writes about Haiti, which is a country that I know very little about but am fascinated by from cultural and policy perspectives. I also have a very tiny personal connection. When I was a wee lass, my aunt went to Haiti to do humanitarian work, and she brought me back a Creole primer and a wood table and chair set for my dolls. My aunt also served as a VISTA volunteer in the Haitian community in Miami. From what I understand, Haiti is one of those nations that has consistently been fucked by racism, poverty, and the United States meddling in its affairs, which exacerbates the first two problems. Danticat also writes about the beauty that remains in the country, so I am excited to delve into her work.

*Professor? The technical titles confuse me.

Registration

This afternoon is the first day of registration for incoming students at the New School MFA program. Deep breath. I'm nervous as hell. The writing workshops don't scare me as much as the literary courses do. I only took one literature course in college, and that was 13 years ago. Oof. As for the writing part, I'm still grappling with the difference between "literary" versus "magazine-y" writing. For example, I consider this passage from Saturday's post about my toilet to be literary, what with the ghost imagery and all:

For the first five or so years that we resided at this apartment, our industrial-type toilet (it has no tank) dealt very effectively with the digestive abuse we hurled upon it. Then last year, I noticed a change. After I flushed and the water settled, wisps of toilet paper drifted back up from the pipe, like ghosts haunting the bowl. Even the most basic uses of the toilet required an after-flush to send the restless toilet paper souls back to their watery graves. Still, the hardier matter went away and didn't reappear.

Somehow, I suspect that working these lines into something I submit for class will not earn me accolades, though.

Mmmmm.... Mars Bars!

Yesterday I ate a Mars Bar. It's not one of my original stock in which I brought back from London in March or even from the second batch a friend gave me in April when he stayed with us for two short nights. Instead, I purchased it at a British shop in that gray area between Greenwich Village and Chelsea two weeks ago. I figured I could keep in the fridge until I heard back from New School about whether or not I'll be part of the class of 2010.

It turns out that the Tarot card reader I visited in early March was correct: I am indeed attending the New School in the fall!!! The call came today yesterday at 5:15 PM from the admissions office. I'm nervous as hell, but also excited. Whew! What a trip!

Speaking of trips, the Tarot reader's other prediction involved the chance to travel extensively or even live in another country in the next year. That seemed even less likely than getting into New School, so I didn't really think about it. Yet this too shall come to pass it seems: Husband's company asked him to move to London for four years. The relocation is to take place in March 2009. It is an amazing career move for him. When I didn't think I was going to get into an MFA program, I was nervous about moving, but pleased to have easy access to Mars Bars. I figured that I could apply to writing programs over there and keep my fingers crossed that I'd get in. We plan on renting a two bedroom flat, so there is plenty of room for visitors. (Hint, hint.)

Clearly, the New School thing is a wonderful complicating factor. For now, I plan to attend the first year of classes, then join Husband in London for the summer. I'll return to NYC for the second year. Hopefully, he'll be coming to NYC for work frequently and I'll get to go see him in London during school breaks. The thought of all this is scaring the shit out of me, though.

To put it mildly, there's a lot going on here - multiple tentacles of happenings, reaching out and grabbing. Lots of good and interesting things, but still, it is hard for me to absorb it all, let alone savor anything.

Rats!

On the plane ride back from BlogHer, I read a fascinating book about the history of rats in New York City, Rats by Robert Sullivan. The best parts of the book were the historical anecdotes and facts about rats. Also, the few gross-o things I learned (i.e. - if the rat population grows too large to support itself, the furry beady-eyed beasts turn to cannibalism) and squeamish close encounters with rats were great. Less interesting was the author's observations of and ruminations about some rats in an alley in downtown New York, which got me thinking about types of nonfiction writing.

Last week after my writing class, I spoke to the instructor about my desire to attend an MFA program in the fall. He felt that I demonstrated excellent progress in class, but that my writing was not literary, but more journalistic. He described it as "magazine-y," and pointed out that in the prior week I described a couple using the word yuppie. "Yuppie is a label," he said. "It doesn't mean anything."

My additional assignment for this week is to take a page of an article in Vanity Fair and a page from New York, circle all the adjectives, copy it, and bring it to class. I began working on it on my way to the conference, only to discover that what I thought would be obvious isn't so. Sure, I know that an adjective describes a noun, but in reading these articles, I'm having a hard time determining how certain words are being used. Perhaps this is the point of the exercise. Or perhaps I am dumb. In any event, as I read Rats, I tried to determine whether the parts of the book I liked were literary or journalistic. (Answer: Don't know yet. Still trying to understand what makes something "magazine-y" versus "literary.")

So much to learn, so little time. Of one thing in which I am certain: if a rat ever swam up through my toilet bowl, as is known to happen because they are strong swimmers (I was going to say Olympic, but maybe that's magazine-y?), and poked its whiskered nose out, I'd have a heart attack.

Whenever the Phone Rings, I Have a Mini Stroke

It's down to the wire with the New School's wait list. The letter I received about the wait list noted that they "expect to keep our wait list active until June 30." Every time the phone rings, I feel like the blood stopped running to my brain (although some might argue that happened a while ago, anyway).

So the constant calls of solicitors is not good for me. Almost every day, I get at least two calls requesting donations for this worthy cause or that excellent organization. Actually, I do not get the calls. I just answer the phone. The caller almost always requests Mr. Husband Last-Name-Pronounced-Like-an-Ethnic-Slur-Against-People-from-An-Eastern-European-Country-With-A-Long-History-of-Anti-Semitism. It's like if I called some named Ms. Count, but asked for Ms. Cunt, then expected her to give me money. Yeesh.

Plus, I discovered that the MFA admissions game is not over even when it technically ends. A few weeks ago, I met a woman who got into the nonfiction MFA program at New School off the wait list. "It was at the very last minute," she told me. Yesterday I emailed her and asked how last minute. "I didn't get in until the first week of September when school had already started, and I guess someone dropped out or didn't show up for first classes," she wrote. Ugh. Now I can be a nervous wreck at intermittent points over the entire summer.

The Lucy Stone League

My writing class is fabulous. The assignment for this week is to write a profile of the worst boss I ever had. (In prior weeks, we were assigned to write a piece about something we didn't want anyone to know and a piece in which each paragraph begins with the phrase, "I remember..." We get two pages in which to express ourselves, and working within very specific parameters is helping me in many ways.) The instructor gave us an example of an excellent profile, a story called "Mazie." It was written by the infamous New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell in 1940, and is about a woman who works at a movie theater on the Bowery. To say she is a total character is an understatement.

At one point in the piece, Mazie talks about meeting Fannie Hurst and being suspicious of her because she didn't want to appear in Hurst's writing. I'd never heard of Fannie Hurst before, so I looked her up online. (Sorry mom, I don't have any encyclopedias sitting around the apartment, although I know this is your preferred method of research.) Hurst was a well-known novelist in the 1920s and 1930s. Even better, she was a member of the Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to be able to keep their maiden names after they got married and use them legally. (Motto: "My name is the symbol for my identity and must not be lost." I get shivers down my spine reading that.)

Is this not the coolest thing ever? Now, I acknowledge that a woman's maiden name is really her father's family name, indicating that you are your dad's property (thus a boy is also his dad's property) and thus changing your name at marriage just signals that another man now owns you. To some women, it is important to take their husbands' names, and who am I to tell them otherwise? If that's what you want, good for you. But, I felt very strongly associated with the name I was given at birth. Suzanne Reisman is me. So I didn't change my name, and happily, most people didn't bat an eyelash. (And those who did received swift tongue lashings from me that made them sorry they said anything. Stupid fucks.)

I just love picturing these strong, smart, sassy women in the 1920s sitting around in their little fur stoles and chapeaus agitating for their rights. Even better, it turns out that the League is again active today, and fights for equal rights! I'm totally joining up. It's just amazing what unexpected things you can learn while taking a class, isn't it?

Hot Happenings

It's hot here. Not in the Paris Hilton "That's hott" way. It's hot as in the I sweat through my underwear walking down the block hot. (And no, reducing the pube mass down there would not have made me any less sweaty.) When it's 95 degrees and 97% humid, there is nothing except air conditioning and/or a freezing shower that will help. It is to remain this hot for the next few days. Bah.

Last week I began a prose writing course at mediabistro. As I have never enrolled in a "real" writing class before, I had no idea what to expect. I learned that I cannot distinguish between concrete and abstract narratives. It sounds easy enough - is this sentence providing concrete or abstract details? - but this is a deceptive lie. Fortunately, I am not the only clueless student, and perhaps the distinction will sink in over the next seven Wednesday evenings.

The class is taught by the associate director of the New School's MFA program. One of the women in the class is a computer programmer and current nonfiction student in the New School MFA program. She rocks. Incidentally, she was wait listed last year. She said she was admitted at the last minute. (Die, false hope that this has raised! Die!)

Even if my brilliant inability to distinguish between abstract and concrete narrative does not convince the powers that be at New School that I am perfect for their MFA program, I feel very good about the class so far. It is good experience for any future program that might be fooled into admitted me; I am learning things; and hopefully, I will also walk away from the course with a new friend. All good things, assuming that I first do not melt in this hideous heat.

A Treaser Hunt With THE Girl Who Wanted To Be In Professional Baseball, or The Trosure Hunt of 1775 Apartment

No matter what the title of the story is, this is one good yarn. Demand will undoubtedly be strong, so download it now while it is still free:

Treasure%20Hunt.pdf
(Hopefully the PDF is legible. It is quite a process to scan a document written by an 11 year old in pencil on lined paper that has become ragged over the decades.)

I am proud to say that I improved my punctuation and spelling skills, plus managed to gain a bit more control over digressions, in the 20 years since I wrote this "Treasure" (or Treaser or Trosure...).

Storytime Delay and Lessons from Bubbe

I discovered that documents written in pencil on lined paper in 1986 or 1987 do not scan well. Since the story is much better when read in its original form (and includes an important drawing), I am going to photocopy it and make it darker, then try to scan it again.

In place of "A Treaser Hunt with THE Girl Who Wanted To Be In Professional Baseball," CUSS instead presents the following conversation with Bubbe:

"Hey Bubbe, how come Bob* isn't married?" I asked her, knowing full well what the answer would be. Bob is a friend of the family who is in his late 50s. He attended her birthday party with his mother.

She learned forward, her eyes gleaming with bochinche.** "Because he's a feygelah!!!"

My sister snickered. "Ask her why he's gay?" she said under her breath. I like instigating, so I followed her directions. "Bubbe, how come he's a feygelah?"

"Because," she leered. "His mother didn't hide nothing from him."

"Huh? What's that mean?" I asked, knowing full well what she meant.

"She let him see her naked, and that made him a feygelah." She nodded and leaned back into the cushions of the rust colored couch. "Yes."

And this concludes our lesson on human sexuality with Bubbe. Next time, tune in for a diatribe on why Barack Obama hates Israel. Or better yet, I'll get my story scanned and posted.

*Name changed to protect the slandered.
**I'm not sure how to spell this, but it is Puerto Rican slang for juicy gossip.

The Treasure of My Parents' Couch

The first sentence in the personal statement I included with my MFA applications was a lie. I wrote that I never planned to become a writer. (My memory only appears to go back to 7th grade, when, during my bat mitzvah speech, I asked God to provide me with a scholarship to Northwestern University so that I could later go to law school.) However, a document freshly unearthed from my parents' couch last night provided evidence to the contrary.

Among the videos and CDs that my parents stored on their couch was a free promotional Kellogg's cereal promotional clipboard/folder that I received in 1987 at a Cubs game. The clipboard/folder formerly resided in my bedroom, and I have no idea how it wound up on the couch, but when my sister pitched a fit and irrationally insisted on clearing the videos and CDs off the couch so people could sit on it, I noticed it.

Inside, I found several sheets of lined paper containing a story titled, "A Treaser [sic] Hunt with THE Girl Who Wanted to Be In Professional Baseball." In my list of "a million different things" I wanted to be when I grew up, I wrote, "First of all, I want to be an author, second an advertiser, third a baseball umpire." More important, the original story illustrates that I did not, in fact, recently learn the magic of dialog. The ten page story, written in pencil, is chock full of dialog.

As soon as I get home, I will scan this hilarious story and post it on CUSS. (Dana and I damn near busted a gut laughing at it.) When I do, it will prove that:
1. I was a gifted 11 year old.
2. I have become dumber in my old age.
3. I am only now relearning writing skills I began developing over 20 years ago.

Fascinating.

More Reading

While I marvel at the fact that a publisher is letting me write things like:

In a secluded corner of the park near the water, a man stood masturbating (or possibly shaking off after urinating) in the bushes. I am fairly sure this was not a performance art piece, as the park’s other visitors were assiduously ignoring him.

in my book about unusual things to see and do in New York City, and at the same time hoping that whatever evil pain has possessed my back goes away before I leave tomorrow to visit my bestest buddy Dr. P (who I have not seen since September - sob!) in Florida, others may want to check out a depressing essay about the overwhelming guilt I feel about not wanting to have kids in light of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is today, and/or an inspiring article about two interesting women working in different ways to bring reform to fundamentalist Muslim communities.

I believe that the above is the longest run-on sentence I ever produced.

Deep, Dark Secret #439: I Don't Read Books

OK, so my title is slightly misleading. I do read books, but not nearly as many as I should. In recent years, I became super lazy and spent most of my reading time on magazines, newspapers, and blogs. While I believe that many of these sources have superior writing (well, not newspapers - it's fucking pathetic how awful news reporting is these days), they also are not providing me with models for what makes a good book with a plot, which I hope to write some day.

Fortunately, my friend invited me to join her book club a few years ago, so I've read one quality book about every month or so. As it became clear to me that learning to write is not just done in writing workshops, I decided that I should make an effort to read more books to see what works and what doesn't. In the past few weeks, I found that the best-selling memoir A Girl Called Zippy by Haven Kimmel is nothing more than a few short essays sort of strung together; that some of the most best character development can take place in "trashy" popular fiction, as I adored Bangkok 8 by John Burdett (its sequel, Bangkok Tattoo, is not quite as good); and that I still believe that The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson is a masterpiece of creative non-fiction.

One of the things I most dreaded about MFA programs was the mandatory literary criticism coursework. This is both because I am an intellectual slacker at times, and also because I am afraid that such coursework will demonstrate that I am, in fact, a clueless idiot. Now that I better understand the value of dissecting books to learn from them as opposed to just enjoying them while I read (or worse, skim), I hope that I get into a program so that I can challenge myself with this work.

If I am not accepted off the wait list at New School, my plan is to apply to low residency programs (basically, you live at home, and twice a year for two weeks, you attend intensive on-campus seminars, workshops, and lectures, then are assigned a mentor with whom you develop a contract; you go home, do your reading and writing, and correspond with your mentor) that emphasize reading as well as writing. Probably I should have applied to low residency programs when I also applied to New School and Hunter last fall, but I stupidly did not do so.

Anyhow, if anyone has any suggestions for well-crafted books, I'm all ears.

If the Moon is Made of Green Cheese, Mars is Chocolate, Nougat, and Caramel

The New School logo on the small envelope jumped out at me when I reached into our mail slot to gather today's haul of junk mail.

"Alright, so I'm rejected," I thought to myself as I grabbed it. "At least I can eat the fucking Mars bar already."

I decided to open it in the hallway of the building. This was not such a great idea, as when I read, "I am happy to inform you that you have been wait listed for the concentration in Nonfiction for the Fall 2008 semester," I started jumping up and down. Had someone turned the corner, I might have knocked her over. I skipped through the lobby. At least I didn't squeal until I went into my apartment and shut the door.

Next order of business: attack Mars. Sure, I technically still have no idea if I'll be attending an MFA program in the fall (the wait list is active until June 30), but I wasn't outright rejected. A celebration of caramel, chocolate, and nougat was definitely in order. Especially after I ate a little sandwich bag that I packed with baby carrots, then noticed the insect in it as I was throwing the "empty" baggie away. Healthy is, like, sooooo overrated. And, according to the Mars bar wrapper, Mars bars are, "Suitable for Vegetarians," so everyone except those uptight vegans can indulge. :) Mmmmmm....

Now, back to waiting.

It's For the Best

As I re-read my blog post from yesterday, it occurred to me that whenever I was rejected by my top choice educational program, it always winds up being to my benefit in the long run. Had I attended NYU's law school, I likely would be a lawyer today. If I hadn't talked Columbia into taking me off the waitlist for the MPA program, I would've gone to NYU, had no debt from grad school (or very minimal debt), and been tapped into a much stronger and connected alumni network. So while my rejection from Hunter stings, I am looking at the positive side of it. It clearly was not meant to be.

Now we'll see if my tarot card reading was right. She strongly felt that I would be attending New School in the fall, and while I woulod be very overwhelmed at first, it would ultimately be a good fit for me. (Of course, she also thought I would get into Hunter, but the vibes from New School were stronger. We all know how Hunter worked out...) Hopefully, I'll get some notice yea or nay from them this week.

In the meantime, back to my exciting data entry and database management work. Thank goodness for mind-numbing repetitive tasks, right?

The Thorn is Out

When I applied to law school in 1996, the process was pretty straight forward. If you did well on the LSAT, had a decent GPA, and proved to be the slightest bit interesting, you were getting in somewhere. I applied to four schools, and was accepted to two second tier programs with scholarships, and waitlisted at two top tier schools. At the end of the day, I was glad that I did not get into my top choice program, as I suspect I would have felt compelled to finish law school and begin a miserable career as an attorney.

In 1997, when I applied to public administration programs, I knew that schools preferred people with some work experience. I hoped that my single year would be enough to get me through the doors of the two programs to which I applied. Immediately, I was accepted at one school and given a scholarship. The program I preferred to go to waitlisted me. Although I ultimately was accepted, I hated that the program was more business-focused than public service oriented, which struck me as odd for a public administration and policy school. I worked while I schooled, finished my two years there, and began a miserable career as a child care policy expert.

Given my history with graduate education, I am not sure why I expected it to be different this time. If anything, the admissions qualifications are even murkier: demonstrate talent. What the fuck does that mean? I tried my best, and sent my writing sample to two programs, knowing that only six people are admitted at one of them.

I knew that I didn't make the cut at Hunter when I didn't get a call in February (hence all my blather about silent bad news), but I didn't have an official rejection, either. At first, I just wanted it to be over with. The longer I lived in limbo, the more I knew that rejection would hurt. This morning, I sent an email to the program director, noting that I understood that the six spots were filled, but if something opened up in the late spring or summer, I would love it if they would consider me. She emailed me back a few hours later and said that she would keep me in mind.

Imagine my surprise when I found my rejection letter from the program in the mail when I got home from work. I realize that suggesting that they eat shit is inappropriate, but I sort of can't help but think it anyway. Fuckers.

Happy March!

Just sayin'. I'm going into March like a very nervous lion with a lot of decisions to make (should I hunt now or later? go where the gazelles usually hang out, even though I hate that pasture, or try to find a new place to harvest gazelle meat? maybe I should forget about the gazelles altogether and focus on zebras?), so I hope that I end the month like a very content lamb, albeit not one that has no idea she is about to turn into lamb chops.

God, I love metaphors.

Call for Submissions. Period.*

Brilliance is inspiring. Two days ago, I read a very funny/mortifying story by Jessica, who is hilarious, about how she learned how to use tampons. It occurred to me that many of us delightful women bloggers have shared these "my first period" stories with the wide world of the web at some point. I love reading them. Everyone has a different experience, and yet they are so easy to relate to and universal in their own horrifying ways. It's good stuff.

As I tried to leave a comment for Jessica about how much I enjoyed reliving her painful adolescence (fucking Blogger ate it), it dawned on me: we should put together a book of essays about getting our periods. Or about coping with getting our periods, as some of the better stories don't involve that first fateful day of doom. Maybe a book like this already exists since it's not exactly an original concept. (A quick search on Amazon for books about menstruation yielded only treacly guides for girls and anthropological and cultural studies and criticism, but not fun essay books. I jaunted over to Barnes & Noble and saw nothing on the topic, either.) Even if it does, we can spin the book as the first book of essays about getting our periods written by non-famous blogging women. (How can any publisher resist?)

If this idea interests you, speak up and I will investigate how to get this off the ground. Since I love reading all your blogs (and the writing of my non-blogging friends, several of whom I think would come up with really awesome essays), I know this will be great. If not as a book (for which you'd get paid for your contribution!), then maybe we can have one of those blogging carnival things that always happen but I don't understand at all. We'll call it Bloody Bloggers Day or something.

*Apologies for leaving out the two or so men who read CUSS. Maybe you can write a funny essay about your first nocturnal emission or something equally embarrassing. Actually, that would be an awesome book/blog day, too...

Shaking It Out

Once or twice a month (or more, depending on my anxiety level, so generally more), I have hyper-realistic dreams about failing school or being involved with people who I have known since my elementary school days. Two night ago, I dreamed that I kept missing the bus because I left my backpack at Target, where I stopped to look at some clothes before school. This was significantly less intense than my usual school-anxiety dreams, which tend to center around me not going to a specific class (German, Spanish, or more recently, math) for the entire semester and then panicking as finals approach because I am so far behind that I don't even remember where the fucking classroom is. I can't explain how I ever let it get so far, and I generally wake up in a sweaty state of dread which takes me the better portion of the day to overcome.

The other intense dreams that occur when I go to bed feeling apprehensive about something involves people I haven't seen in years. Last night I dreamed that I was involved to varying degrees with three guys, two of whom I was buddies with in elementary school and one of whom I was friendly with my freshman year of high school. (The last time I saw the guys from my days of early childhood was at my high school class reunion in 2004. I haven't seen my pal from high school since senior year, and we weren't really friends at that point any longer.) Whenever I have these dreams with people from the past, I am almost consumed in the day time by the urge to find them online and try and strike up a conversation with them. I spend hours finding them, and then am smart enough (for once) to not do anything about it. The funny thing is that at least one of these guys is a regular in my subconscious anxiety dump.

I guess I am trying to go back to more secure times in my life, even if they get weirdly updated to being adults. (The subconscious is truly one fucked up bitch.) I am all bothered these days because I want so badly to be accepted into a particular MFA program, and terrified that my trite stories will be laughed at by the graduate admissions committee. If anyone is willing to read 30 pages of stories from my youth and today (involving getting - and losing - boobs and my period), I would welcome your feedback.

My (Not So) Dumb Ass

Since the book is done for now, I am turning my attention to my applications for graduate creative writing programs. Yes, I am psyched that I wrote a guidebook/travelogue, but next I want to write something with a plot and characters and all that jazz. To do that, I gotta learn more about writing and shit.

One of the schools I am applying to requires the GRE, which I never took. (When I hustled off to policy school, the places I applied to took my LSAT score, sparing me the agony of learning GRE math.) The admissions decisions are not really based on test scores, but I still need to do well enough that the university at large agrees to let me enroll in the case that I am admitted to a writing program. I bought a study book from Kaplan and took my diagnostic exam this morning. For the 12 math questions, I basically guessed on every one. I managed to get half correct. The verbal portion went much better, although not the results were not sterling at 75% correct. I did unusually poorly in reading comprehension, so I'll chalk that up to a fluke. More studying to come.

I also learned this morning that Nov. 29 is officially recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People. Fuck that. The same New York Times article mentions that "711,000 left Israel-controlled territory in 1948 and 1949" and in 1948, "856,000 Jewish residents left Arab countries." The World Jewish Congress submitted a memo to the United Nations Economic and Security Council in 1948about the danger facing Jews in the Middle East in response to a 1947 draft law composed by the Arab League "that called for measures to be taken against Jews living in Arab countries" including "imprisonment, confiscation of assets and forced induction into Arab armies" as well as beatings, officially incited violence, and programs. However, the memo was buried by the Lebanese ambassador and president of the council.

I don't need a good GRE score to understand how unfair and biased the world is.

2 Years of CUSS!

With all the excitement that is going on these days with the book, applying to writing programs, and the imminent arrival of my family for Brother-in-Law's nuptials, I nearly forgot that today is the two year anniversary of the Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS) & Other Rants. Two years ago today, I was a frustrated, dissatisfied do-gooder on the way to meet another do-gooder friend for French onion soup. My day had been particularly distressing, as was often the case with my former career, and I found myself sitting on the subway seething over an ad for bikini waxing. Moments later, I formulated a plan: instead of stabbing people, I needed a blog to vent, and it needed a catchy title. Somehow the whole CUSS acronym popped into my feral mind and I knew that I found a way to salvation.

I disembarked from the subway and ran to tell my friend about it. The bar we were meeting at gave crayons to patrons (how perfect is that?) and I drew a little diagram on my placemat outlining the CUSS credo. When I got home a few hours later, I posted my very first blog entry.

Since then, I've loosened my no-waxed/shaved-snatch stance a bit because I met so many awesome women who explained to me why they preferred trimming, waxing, or shaving their cooters. None of them did it because some cretins think that pubic hair automatically makes women dirty or smelly, so who the hell was I to tell them how to deal with their boxes? Understanding other people - this is what I consider progress. I'm glad that CUSS opened me up to new ideas, not only about landing strips, but on a wide spread (heh heh) range of topics. It led me to meet so many awesome people who I am proud to call friends.

Now I'm getting all choked up. The truth is that I'd probably blog whether people read my blog or not because I discovered that I find writing to be fun and therapeutic. However, it would be far less meaningful if it wasn't for the select segment of the blogging community in which I've become a part. Here's to the next two years.

One Year Later

One year ago today, at about this time, I packed up the Powerpuff Girl figurines, the pictures of Husband and my sister, and a squishy stress-relief ball shaped like a green paper advertising the Child Care and Adult Food Program, and I left my job at a nonprofit community development financial reinstitution after nearly five years. It took me two years and two previous attempts to quit, but mounting frustration, seething rage, and desperation at working in an agency that took 40 cents of every dollar that I fundraised to cover overhead costs while offering me absolutely zero support took its toll. Every year I received glowing reviews from my direct and indirect bosses about how I continually exceeded expectations and single-handedly oversaw a program to build more child care center for low income kids in New York City, but not once was I ever offered a job promotion or job title that reflected the full amount of work I performed. While my peers and externally partners respected me, I was rewarded with suspicion and wrath from the upper echelons of the agency for not fundraising enough to cover their five-figure bonuses and six-figure salaries. (This is not secret info, by the way: it is all public in the agency's Form 990.)

My bosses liked to tell people that I left to write my book about unusual things to see in do in New York City, and that is partly true. Within 8 months, a small publisher in Nashville bought my book, I published several articles in local newspapers, and began writing a memoir about puberty and other bodily betrayals. Not working for those wretched fucks improved my mood for the first time in years, but I didn't fully escape their tentacles. Since these wonderful accomplishments didn't pay very much and I felt guilty about living off my husband (something I swore from a young age that I would never do), I agreed to consult for a City agency, working closely with my friend who took my old job. Obviously, there has not yet be enough distance for me to get over my experience yet.

Still, today is a day I am celebrating because I took important steps toward a new career. I indulged in a piece of guava bizcocho Dominicano, a traditional yellow cake with frosting so sweet that I actually felt the sugar granules in the neon pink frosting crunching in my teeth. Husband and I then headed out to the Queens County Farm Museum, the last site I plan to visit for my book. (Yay!) We toured a farmhouse that has been on the site since the late 1700s, pet sheep, and wandered around in the seasonal three acre corn maze. The unseasonably warm day of fun was capped off with gyros (pronounced with a hard "g" in Chicago, a soft "g" in New York, and a "y" in Greece).

As we trudged out of the farm, sweaty and full of meat, a family passed us on their way in. Their teenage son was wearing a t-shirt that read, "I (heart) hot moms." Husband and I exchanged glances. "That shirt would not be disturbing if the guy who was wearing it was not 16," Husband remarked.

You can say all that again. Here's to another wacky and weird year of change.

Write, Write, Write Your Stories

Did I claim that my allergies were bothering me yesterday? I lied. A big, fat, nasty cold is punishing me for thinking such mean thoughts about that hapless guy at the pharmacy. (Urban Pedestrian and Average Jane pointed out in the comments to this morning's post that there are pills that sort of do what the guy wanted.)

The only good part about my situation is that today and tomorrow are writing days. I want to finish the first draft of the book by Monday. (Originally, I planned on Friday, but then realized that my last site visit is on Saturday.) As long as I am required to be cooped up in my apartment, I can deal with a cold. Plus, I was excited to discover a blurb about the book in Publishers Weekly. It came up on a google search I did on myself (that sounds perverted, doesn't it?) and said, "Suzanne Reisman's OFF THE BEATEN (SUBWAY) TRACK, an alternative guidebook to all that is strange, weird and wonderful about New York City's often overlooked ..." When I tried to look at the website, it said I need to pay to be a member. (If anyone out there has access to this and can let know what it says, that'd be awesome.)

This morning I also wrote an essay for BlogHer about the bullshit that goes on during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The conclusion makes me particularly proud:

Don't buy products you didn't plan on buying anyway. If M&Ms were on your shopping list, then it can't hurt to buy a pink bag instead of a regular one. That's an extra 14 cents (or however the math works out) that will now go to breast cancer causes that you would have spent anyway. But if M&Ms were not on your list, why not just donate the bag's purchase price directly to a cause you support? Not only will the organization get the full benefit of the $3.25 (or however much a big bag of M&Ms cost), you can also write the amount off of your taxes, fattening your own bottom line (and this was NOT meant to be a pun, although it is certainly applicable in my own life) instead of some corporation's.

Thank goodness I amuse myself.

The Competition

This evening, I took another step toward hopefully entering an MFA program for creative nonfiction writing next fall, and attended an open house at The New School with two women from my writing group. Generally, we agreed that the program sounded interesting and exciting (although I was slightly concerned at how inarticulate two out of the three student panelists were), and I am definitely applying there. The highlight of the evening came during the question and answer session:

Audience Member 1: How important is the writing sample when applying?

Program Director: The writing portfolio is the most important part of the application, followed by the statement of purpose, followed by the letters of recommendation.

Audience Member 2: So do we need a writing profile to apply?

After a few more exchanges along these lines, the event ended. I called Husband to tell him I was on my way home to watch the Mets lose yet again. (Seriously, this is killing me.)

"Oh, well, they are up 3 to nothing," he reported, albeit guardedly.

When I walked into my apartment 20 minutes later, Carlos Delgado hit a home run and the Mets were up 6 to nothing. Hurray! About an hour or so after that, we lost 9 to 6. I really need to stop watching for the rest of the season.

Goals/Gaols

Today's goal is to finish writing up all my lower Manhattan site visits. As I was thinking about my goals in general, my head got the word confused with "gaol." "Ha ha ha," I thought to myself, "isn't it weird that the two words are spelled the same way?" Then I remembered that they weren't spelled the same way, although sometimes goals are like little gaols that trap you, aren't they?

Maybe I need to get out more.

Laxatives, Chicken Feet, and Bloody Jesus: A Day in the Life

Wednesday and Thursday were chock full of exciting site visits for my upcoming book on things to do that are off the beaten path in New York City.

On Wednesday, I bought an awesome magnet depicting Louis Armstrong sitting on a toilet shilling for Swiss Krissly laxatives. (Satchmo-Slogan: Leave It All Behind Ya) at the Louis Armstrong House. As I learned on the tour, Armstrong took Swiss Krissly laxatives every day. Yes, every day. He also smoked a lot of pot and once fooled Richard Nixon into carrying his trump case, stuffed with the wacky weed and his instrument, through airport security in France. The whole house tour and strange rituals sort of reminded me of that other Southern musical sensation who died 30 years ago yesterday. (Sorry, Ma, but Graceland seems even tackier compared with Armstrong's house, even though it has some over-the-top elements as well.)

At the end of the day, I stopped by El Indio Amazonico botanica that someone told me would be perfect for the book. Unfortunately, the website is no longer up, but this place scared the fucking shit out of me. (No need for Swiss Krissly here.) The window had a picture depicting a close up of Jesus's face and the cross he is nailed to behind his head. As the picture rotated, his eyes flipped open and shut, thanks to the high tech working of whatever material it is that causes images to shift when the angle changes. (Not and saina hologram, but I can't think of the term.) There were oodles of Jesus statues with blood gushing from their sad eyes to welcome me when I stepped inside. What I didn't notice, however, was the painted chicken foot attached to a string of beads dangling from the ceiling. It would up slightly tangled in my hair. Chicken feet weren't the only talismans available, though. Horseshoes with shit glued and/or nailed on them were everywhere. Photos show El Indio Amazonico healing people, and the pile of abandoned crutches in the front corner of the shop seemed to testify to his success. This would have cracked me up had the statue of some saint with blood gushing from numerous gaping wounds stared accusingly at me. I bought a candle that would bring good luck (it has pennies glued to the outside and stuck within the wax, and I am sure that they charged the gringa at least double for it) and got the fuck out of there.

Thursday afternoon's odd adventure is told so well by Super Des that you should just read it there. I am so glad she joined me for the fun. Damn, I love this kind of shit.

Yeterday in "Metro New York" and Today's Dumb Ass Letter

An article I wrote on how Bush is no Hitler, but rather an incompetent Mussolini, was printed in yesterday's Metro New York. I'll reprint it here since the link is not direct, although if you want to see a very dyke-y picture of me, by all means click on the link and scroll to page 10.

Comparing Bush to Hitler goes to far
No beating around the Bush: I think that George W. is the worst president in the history of the United States. His lack of regard for the Constitution, his enrichment
of the powerful and wealthy at the expense of the rest of the citizenry, and his maniacal pursuit of war in Iraq makes him just a cut above the others when it comes to the long-term detrimental effects his actions will have on the country.

In fact, I suspect Bush may secretly wish to outdo atrocities committed against democracy by 20th century Presidents Woodrow Wilson (the Sedition Act of 1918
made it illegal to use “disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive language” about the government, and/or armed forces during war), Herbert Hoover (whose corruption came to light during the Teapot Dome Scandal, regarding noncompetitive bidding for an oil field on public land) and Franklin Roosevelt (who demonstrated flagrant disregard for constitutional and human rights when he authorized Japanese-American internment
during WWII). Bush certainly has the edge on these presidents once his defiance of Congress, alienation of the international community and commitment to government
in secrecy is added to his record.

Yet during a recent trip to Italy, when I saw a poster that equated him with Adolf Hitler, I was offended. Referring to Bush as Hitler is very popular with protesters in the U.S. and abroad. In doing so, protesters denigrate the true evil that Hitler wrought on this planet. Bush may be a terrible person, and his policies have undeniably led to the deaths of many thousands of people, but he never systemically ordered mass murder. Bush’s intention is not genocidal, and to claim otherwise is an insult to people who have experienced a direct attempt to permanently eradicate their cultures.

That said, there are figures from the Second World War to which Bush may be compared. Italians should know better than most that Bush has a striking resemblance to their very own fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Mussolini exploited a fearful population while promising security and order. He exercised censorship and mastered the use of propaganda, something Bush is trying very hard to emulate. While
Mussolini discriminated against minorities (in this case Italian Jews), he never sent any to death or labor camps. The parallels are thus uncanny — although
Mussolini was at least successful in getting the trains to run on time, whereas Bush is busy destroying national infrastructure, including entire cities.

I think it is very clear that I think Bush is an evil fearmonger who discriminates against different groups of people, just like Mussolini. However, unlike Hitler, Bush has not planned and executed genocide. Of course, today's letter to the editor misses the entire point completely. My friend Michael Boyajian wrote:

Regarding Suzanne Reisman’s column “Comparing Bush to Hitler
Goes Too Far” (July 25): Reisman may have it wrong. There are strong parallels between Bush and Hitler. Both used fear to reach certain ends, launched long, unjust
wars, broke the rules of democracy and targeted scapegoats — Hitler committed genocide against the Jews and Bush fostered hatred against the gay community. Yes, a close scrutiny indicates that there is some rationale to this comparison.

Michael, if your thick little head finished reading the column, you will see that I agreed with you on all of your points except that Hitler is so evil HE KILLED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE IN DEATH CAMPS. Has Bush rounded up gays and killed them? No? Then I guess the parallel is not nearly as close to HItler as it is to Mussolini and other fascist leaders who don't go that one special step further and launch genocide campaigns.

What the fuck is wrong with people that they can't understand that discrimination is a vile, morally repulsive and terrible thing, but it is not the same as killing nine million people? And this, my friends, is why I hate people.

Dotting the T's and Crossing the I's

It's 50% official. Last night I signed a contract to write an eclectic guide to eclectic New York City for Cumberland House Publishing, a small extremely eclectic press in Nashville, TN. I'm dropping the contract off with my agent (a friend of mine) later today. Needless to say, I'm pretty gosh tootin' excited about the whole thing. Little old me is going to have a published book out sometime this spring!

Yep, I said this spring. My manuscript is due on Nov. 1, so I'll be bopping around the City for the rest of the summer (when I'm not trying to fix the City's publicly funded child care system or in Chicago, that is) and most of the fall. Quite a bit of the sites have been visited already, as I worked on the proposal and sought a publisher, but there are still numerous places to see. This afternoon, por ejemple, I'll be hitting up the National Museum of Catholic Art and History in East Harlem, as well as watching kids fish in Central Park, and hanging out with free roaming peacocks in the garden of the largest cathedral in the US that may also be the country's longest ongoing construction project.

Hopefully, CUSS readers will vicariously enjoy the journey. Good times ahead!

Staten Island: A Borough from Another Planet

I spent the day exploring some of the more intruguing sites that Staten Island has to offer. This is research for my book on unusual things to see and do in New York City (more on that later). For those of you unfamiliar with New York's outer boroughs, Staten Island is the borough that is really a suburban wasteland of guido Republican Yankee fans masquerading as a part of the city. Still, I completely enjoyed my time on this island of mystery and intrigue. I went to a ridiculous science museum that displayed petrified rabbit turds in a matchbox, a lesbian Victorian era photographer's house, the craziest grotto shrine I have ever witnessed (and that is saying a lot), a museum dedicated to bolstering the case of Antonio Meucci as the true inventor of the telephone (I went in thinking they'd be crackpots, I left cursing that theiving Bell), and finally a labrynth at a Moravian church. Good times.

The thing that truly blew my mind, though, was when I got on a public bus and asked the driver if he stopped at Hodges Pl. (I knew the route went by it, but it was my way of passively asking him to alert me when we got there, a very common practice among NYC bus riders.)

He looked me in the eye. "I don't know the names of the streets this bus stops at."

"Excuse me? You don't know where this bus stops?"

"I only know it goes down Victory Boulevard," he said and smiled.

Now that scares the crap out of me way more than the Staten Island Ferry crowd.

Preparing to Meet My (Book) Maker

There is a closet-size designer boutique a few blocks away from my apartment that sells utterly adorable little outfits. Since they are utterly adorable designer outfits, the prices are not remotely adorable. But they have blow out sales at the end of the season, and that is when I scooped this rockin' suit up for 40% off, although mine has a skirt instead of pants.

By then I had been unemployed for several months, so I had no where to wear it. I bided my time. Thursday, May 31, the day was right.

Scorching sun and high humidity blessed us New Yorkers. I thought a cutesy skirt suit would convey to Publisher that I was a Serious Author, yet also fun. The only problem? I had to shave my legs to wear it. Sometimes you just gotta make sacrifices for the greater purpose, you know.

Later, I called Agent Friend and said something about wearing a suit.

"You wore a suit?" he asked.

"Um, was I not supposed to? I knew I should have called you and asked!" Panic rapidly set in. I hoped I didn't blow my chances by being a stiff.

"Most authors just show up in a shorts and flip-flops, so I think that was good."

"Well, it was a creative looking suit," I explained.

He was still impressed by my fanciness. He should've seen me in a sari. (Foreshadowing...)