I came back.
I needed to go away for a while.
When I was a kid, my parents neither wanted nor encouraged me to write shit down on paper.
I was created during the Age of Paper.
I have a number of friends who are writers struggling to be published.
I have this question for them:
What do you expect?
I'll get back to that in a while, but I want you to keep thinking about it: What do you expect?
And then what?
I bet you guys aren't even thinking two moves ahead as you toil over the positioning of your exploratory pawn.
Remember that stack of manuscripts I have sitting here in my office?
It got even bigger this week. I found another one. A version of The Marbury Lens from a while ago. I can't remember.
My office is very clean and open now. I should post a picture of it. Maybe I will, too, when I get back to that question that I want my as-yet-unpublished writer friends to keep thinking about.
I have a couple things I am obligated to turn in this year.
I have never, never, never written anything on assignment -- except for the stuff I had to do when I was a journalist.
I hated being a journalist.
I quit putting shit on paper and became a sort of bum with wanderlust because of it.
Someone -- harmlessly, I might add -- remarked something like Look at all those trees you killed! when I posted the picture of my original manuscripts (which is now bigger).
What can I say? I came out of the Age of Paper.
So, I am thinking I am going to write my next book by hand on the backs of the pages of my original manuscripts.
Somewhere out there, an agent and an editor just got a stomach ache.
My handwriting looks like it was done by a sleep-deprived seven-year-old boy on a tilt-a-whirl.
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My dear friend, the copy editor who is working on Passenger, said something like this: Next time you write a book, you should provide a list of words you choose to freakishly mutate ahead of time, so your editors' heads do not become troubled.
Well. She didn't say it exactly like that, but I probably should do that because I do derive some sick satisfaction creating lexical centipedes.
Are you guys still thinking about that question?
