I’ve been trying to make myself sleep late lately because I think it’s OK to sleep late in the winter, and also I was sick for a while. But I’m up early today anyway. I watched a helicopter make a sweep over the bridge and down toward the the city, and now there’s a couple of errant seagulls looping around in front of my window. The sky’s wishing it could be blue, but it’s not. It’s gray. Gray, gray, gray.

Last night I went into the city and had a drink with the very clever and pretty Michelle Orange, and we discussed the fragility of the writer’s ego, and the ups and downs of the writer’s life, which is obviously a conversation I could have/have had for eternity. I told her that when things get rough I flip through The Diaries of Dawn Powell, which I keep on my writing table. Because in every entry Dawn Powell is always broke and frustrated and even her successes are fraught with stresses but she’s still thinking about what she’s going to write next anyway, because that’s what she does, what a writer does. Like she is always thinking and observing and critiquing. She is always the same throughout.

Kate gave it to me as a gift a few years back when we were first becoming friends, and the older I get, the more the book makes sense to me. I just looked at it again this morning and I found this gem from April 1, 1959:

“This dear charming novel–one thing it must have is rich joy, which I have, but for some reason never write about.”

Later Michelle and I went to a party for Donald, the novella by Eric Martin and Stephen Elliott about what would happen if Donald Rumsfeld were subject to torture. It was very nice to see Stephen, who has been doing extremely well lately. He’s in the ups portion of the writer’s life, right now. It’s always an inspiration to see people kicking ass.

I didn’t stay for the after party. I have been doing that a lot lately, showing up for the main event and then leaving before the party. Because I do want to show support to the performers. No one ever wants to read to an empty room. That’s why we all come out and stand there and be emotionally present and look the author in the eye and murmurm our approval. It’s about being part of a community. But I have been so sick and exhausted this winter that I have just wanted to go home straight away. It did not occur to me until last night that perhaps this could be seen as poor form, but I hope it is not.

There’s this woman I don’t like, a writer, or something that resembles a writer anyway. Like technically she writes things. There are words that come out of her, and they are published. But they are terrible ones, terribly written and also ill-informed and sometimes even cruel. And this woman does the exact opposite of what I do at book events. She skips the performance part entirely and only comes for the party part. She did this a number of times at events of mine. She would make a point to come up to me at the party and smile at me, so that she could get extra credit points for making it to the event. And I would smile brightly back at her because my instinct is just to smile at anyone who shows up.

But after this happened four or five times, I realized what was going on, that she was waltzing in after the fact as if she were too busy and important to sit through someone else’s words. And then I would get angry at myself for smiling back at her and giving her affection and attention, and then that feeling made me queasy. I should not have to force myself to turn off my instinct to smile. It was complicated. In the end I just decided I didn’t like her and then never invited to her another party again. And now I can smile freely at all my parties.

I wonder if people have babies just so they have an excuse to skip book parties for the rest of their lives.

(02/09/11) | 3 Comments »