Remind Me Why I Do This?

“Literature is nothing but carpentry…  Both are very hard work.  With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood…  I never have done any carpentry, but it’s the job I admire most.”  –Gabriel Garcia Márquez My dad had two workshops:  one in the basement and a smaller one in the garage.  Bright red vice grips and glue stood ready to mend broken broom handles or busted...

Lovedrunk with that New-New

When it first came to me, from out of a scurrying mess of thoughts, I saw it as small and clear and simple. An image from another time: on a rural stretch of farmland, a son and father lug a handmade, heirloom table up a rise to throw it on a bonfire of everything they’ve ever owned. Just this flicker and nothing else. And that’s the narcotic, isn’t it: that new-new, a bit of imagining that feels fresh and...

The Novel Is Dead, Long Live the Novel…

I’ve been doing an autopsy on a stillborn novel, rubbing warmth back into it. A smart person would probably let it go, but it kills me that it sits undone. I’ve been rereading the manuscript I wrote, to the exclusion of almost everything except earning a paycheck, from, say 1988 to about 1995. I carried that sucker around the way I carry my smartphone and journal now; parts of it were written in dyke bars, while...

Stop It. It’s Not Funny.

I was told the other day that I should try writing a funny story. My stories are so serious. A man going blind, a couple that can’t have children, a girl who gets picked on in school cause she’s a nerd. Not anything you would spit your milk/beer/soda out of your mouth for or more painfully through your nostrils, I know.  I don’t know why I don’t write comedy. I love funny stories. I just don’t know if...

Novel Writing Postpartum

I’ll repeat what I said the last time: It’s hard to write a novel. I start out by shrugging off the future embarrassment I’ll feel, having no idea that my thinking isn’t anything but terribly original and profound. And then I write and I write and I write. I get inspired and I write. I lose inspiration and I write. I stop writing and I feel ashamed. I lose the thread. Something is gumming up...